I am trying to finish a new deck that I just had built, but I cannot seem to remove the ink stamps that the mill put on the boards. Any suggestions? I have tried sanding them out, but they seem to run pretty deep.

My husband and I want to build a low deck in the yard of our rented house. Obviously we want to do this as inexpensively as possible since we don't own the house, however we don't want to cut corners too much. We're not sure how to go about doing this because of a few obstacles in it's path. Our kitchen door is on the side of the house and opens up onto a small concrete landing with two concrete steps down into the yard. We want to build the deck so it either covers or meets one of the steps. The entire west side of the yard is held up by a 6 foot retaining wall (I don't know if this is important but I thought I'd mention it). In addition to the steps, which are along the southern part of the yard, about 4 feet down is a basement window which is surrounded by a masonry window well. The window well is above the ground. We would prefer not to attach the deck to the house and are wondering what to do about the steps and the window well. Do we (can we) go right over them somehow? The yard slopes toward the house so I don't think that constructing the deck on sleepers would be a good idea. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Maria