I was hoping to post the last set of pictures by now but there's one more little change to be made by the builder, which will be explained in the third shot below. After that, most likely any other changes will have to be done by "you know who" since some of these final changes to the deck have already put us over our original budget!

This first picture was taken a little over a week ago one evening (1/20) when I spent the night at the lake. In person, the scene was really nice and I didn't know whether or not I could capture it on the digital camera since the sun had already set. Anyway, I set the camera on the front porch rail to brace it and took the shot. It turned out pretty good. You can see the calm water in the canal in front of the house and, in the distance, the main lake.

Now, about Lake Conroe. I was talking via email to an old high school buddy who had run across these pictures and had asked for some details on the lake, so .... Lake Conroe is a man-made lake started in 1970 and completed in 1973. It is 21,000 acres, about 20 miles long, running north-south along the west fork of the San Jacinto River and is about 4 to 5 miles wide at its widest points. It is located about 6 to 8 miles west of and, basically, parallel to Interstate 45 between Conroe, TX and New Waverly. The southernmost part of the lake is about 30 miles north of Houston.



I went out to the lake on Friday (1/28) to see if any progress had been made on adding the rails to the deck. Well, they had finished with the rails and had also added the storage box at the end of the slip (see last picture below). This first shot shows the rail around the deck and the gate (lower right) leading down to the boat slip. Although the rains had stopped the night before, the deck is wet because the guys had just finished power-washing it.



This next shot shows that there was some mis-communication between Rick and the guys who had done most of the work on the deck (Jim and Lester). I had asked for steps leading down to the ground on this side as had been done on the other side but the rail was built all the way up the side to the porch. Well, as it turns out, this was a good thing because, after talking to Jim about it some more, we decided to leave the rail next to the bench and put the steps slightly forward of the original location that I had envisioned. Basically, Jim will take the taller post (where the rail drops down to the next level) and move it four feet back toward the house, eliminating the rails for those four feet and adding the steps there. Then, he will take some of the materials that were removed and add a short rail on the other side of the deck, enclosing the bench as he did on this end. If this doesn't make sense, I'll take some more pictures when they're done to clarify. Anyway, I think it will look, and work, great when they get it completed!



The last shot shows the storage box at the end of the slip. I had told Rick way back at the beginning that I wanted one of these but both of us had forgetten about it until they started working on the rails and then I remembered. The lockable covers on each end raise to gain access to the box while the middle cover is stationary. I'll probably use it to hold extra life jackets (they're all on the boat right now), some fishing gear, water hose, and no telling what else. It will probably get filled up really quick since I don't have a garage or any other outside storage at this point.

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Last update: 1/30/2005