Fall of the Evil Deck

Aahhh, sweet relief. Our devil-spawn of a deck is finally gone. We hacked that bad boy up with chainsaw and it now currently resides in pieces in a big ugly dumpster on our driveway. The super fun news....the siding behind the deck is all rotten and yucky. So we get to replace that, too. I often watch those home repair/house flipping shows and they always end up finding 10x as many problems when they rip stuff up....it's totally true. We ripped up the deck because we had water come in our basement. Now that the deck is gone, we've spent $2000 on a new patio but we also have to replace the siding. Oh yeah, and build new steps. Oh, and repaint the basement floor. And shampoo the carpet. And cut out the drywall where I'm mortally afraid that what my husband calls "dirt" is actually killer black mold.
On a more positive note (what?) the new patio is wonderful. No maintenance, except for sweeping. I have big plans for doing some nice landscaping around it and buying a cute little firepit.
Ah, the joys of home improvement!