Deck Work

One of the great things about owning a house is that you can make any improvement that you want.  The one terrible thing about owning a house is that you have to do the improvement.  Even if you have a decent concept about how much time, effort, and money a project is going to take, there always seems to be a point when you look around and wonder why you would do something like this.  The payoff, however, is great.  We are very happy the way it turned out and cannot wait to tackle our next project.  Even if it is a small one.

A wonderful feature in our house is the back deck.  It is large enough to have our grill, a couple of chairs, and a few more things if need be.  It was in fairly rough shape though.  The paint was peeling in several places and needed to be redone.  We got help from both of our families at different points in this project.  That is another reason why it is nice to live close enough to family to have that network of support.  We are also a stone throw away from our neighbor's house.  One thing that my wife wanted to put in was a privacy fence on the deck to give us just a little separation from them.  As fun as it is to look right into their house, the fence just adds a little bit more to it.

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A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Sep 23, 2018 at 11:27am PDT

This is a picture of the deck after we got everything was stripped and the privacy fence was added.  

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A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Oct 29, 2018 at 9:07am PDT

The color for the deck turned out great.  We used this product called Deck Over which is suppose to fill in cracks and screw holes.  It is extremely thick and is the same consistency of pudding.  We joked that it looked like chocolate pudding and made us both hungry as we were painting over the course of a few days. 

Hot Take Recap

The 2018 Detroit Tigers baseball season has ended.  Sadly.  But also mercilessly.  Anyone paying attention knew that this season was going to be a bit of a struggle as they traded off any and all pieces that made them contenders in the past.  The fun thing about cheering for a team with low expectations is that if they do well for a stretch of games it feels like some grand accomplishment.  While the prospects the team is waiting for are still in the minors, we fans got to see some pieces of the future play throughout most of the year.  Guys like Jemier Candelario and JaCoby Jones played the majority of the season and both showed what they can contribute to the club going forward.  Christian Stewart got a quick cup of coffee with the club at the end of the season and showed off his bad defense and big bat. 

At the beginning of the season, I wrote a post with some hot luke warm takes.  I stayed conservative with most of the takes and didn't go too far on a limb.  When you are having fun with hot takes/predictions for a team that you know will struggle during the season, you can say things like Ron Gardenhire will get ejected seven times.  To recap, here are my ten bold predictions from the beginning of the year with what actually happened:

• The Tigers will go 72-90 (they went 64-98)
• They'll finish fourth in the division ahead of Kansas City (they finished 3rd)
• Jeimer Candelario will hit .270 for the season (he hit .224)
• James McCann will hit 20 home runs (he hit 8)
• The Tigers will send two players (Castellanos, Fulmer) to the All Star game (Joe Jimenez was the lone representative for the team)
• Joe Jimenez will end the season as the team closer and save 15 games (he had 3 saves and was the setup man the entire year)
• Dawel Lugo will end the season as the every day second baseman with Dixon Machado moving to shortstop (yes and no. Machado was DFA'd)
• Both of those predictions will happen because the Tigers will trade Shane Greene and Jose Iglesias before the trade deadline (nope)
•  Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez will both hit 25 home runs (lolz, no.)
• Ron Gardenhire will be ejected 7 times (he was ejected 4 times)

Like I said, it's fun to do things like that so you can look back and have a good laugh.  The only thing that I came close on was Lugo being around and where they ended the season in the standings.  I look forward to doing this again next spring when we once again know the Tigers are going to flounder and we'll be there every painful step along the way.