We had a bit of a break from the construction this week. We are waiting for the finishing supplies – doors, windows, decking – but it does feel like time lost. Hopefully everything comes in early next week and the guys can get down to business. We decided on Tiger wood (ha!) for the decking instead of Trex or Azek or one of the other synthetic brands. Everything we use will age in the sun and the rain, but with the synthetic stuff, there’s no going back to ‘like new’, no matter how hard you scrub. So at least we might be able to refinish the real wood every few years to brighten it up a bit. They both take the same amount of maintenance, too, and the real wood is a bit cheaper. So we’ll try that and hopefully love it. Once the doors and the windows go up on the mud room, we’ll cover the existing kitchen door and make the current kitchen window into a doorway opening. We’ll make it big enough for a sliding door, but will probably not install one just yet. It will expand the kitchen a bit, get us some really great light, and help the current kitchen configuration to make that renovation easier. More on that after the porches are done 🙂