What's a deck for?

Wonder what to do with a deck? Check this out...

Deck Day 30 - Project Complete

Today we finished the final touches on the deck. Michelle removed the excess wood from the remaining plugs on the picture frame boards, sanded them down, and applied the penofin oil. I patched up a few holes on the leaky rain gutter and installed the low voltage wiring on the walkway.

After that, we sat on the deck by a small fire in our portable firepit and enjoyed the sunset. The exterior lighting lights up our walkway at night and creates a very relaxing scene. This is a view of the front yard through the front window of our home.

The deck took 30 days to construct... a little more than that if you include the extra time spent on the front end planning and researching. This was my first major construction project. It took longer than I thought and it required more learning than I imagined. There are parts of the deck that are not perfect but that is true for every construction project. For every error I created, I discovered a solution that would allow me to avoid the problem next time. In other words, this deck project was a "learning project".

Here are a couple of photos of us relaxing on the deck the day we finished it.

I enjoyed partnering with Michelle on the construction of the deck and I am very thankful for the friends who helped! I am very happy with the outcome. It's something Michelle and I will be able to enjoy for a lifetime.

Deck Day 29

A lot of work got done today and now we are 99.9% finished with the deck.

 this morning we laid down the long board that was going along the side of the house by the fence with our neighbor. I put a 45 on one end and screwed the corner down. I then had Michelle pulled the other end of the board and pull it towards the deck while I screwed additional screws in. This is the only way we knew to straighten it out. Once installed, it looked pretty nice! 

 The next step was to start cutting 45° angles in the remaining picture frame boards. Michelle treated each cat with a coating of wax to protect the boards.

I always get nervous making these cuts and even though I try my best but there's still room for growth. But in the end we were happy with what we ended up with! 

 we used our remaining piece of red mangarus to put a fascia on the back side of the step in the rear of the deck. No one will ever see it, but I will when I go to get something out of the storage area and it's a nice finishing touch the rim of the deck.

 we screwed every picture frame board in one at a time. This is a photo of me inserting the last screw into the deck.

The rest of the day was spent gluing plugs and pounding them into the screw holes. This is very monotonous work but Michelle helped me out by picking out the plugs prior to installation. All I had to do was pound them in with a hammer and a block of wood. 

 this is a photo of me pounding the plug into the last hole on the surface of the deck.

We are very excited with the results and can't wait for the furniture we've ordered. By the way, I can confirm we are starting to go crazy with this project because I lost my tape measure three times today. Not sure how that's even possible since I'm only in the front yard or the backyard but it happened.

 I took a few photos of the deck before the sunset.

 and then sat down for a drink and Michelle took a picture of me staring off into the horizon, relaxing while enjoying the fruits of our labor.

 Tomorrow we will Sand the plugs we installed and apply the final touches of oil to protect the wood. After that, I just need to install a couple of lights and this project is officially done!

Deck Day 28

Today wouldn't have been possible without the help of my friends. All last night, I was struggling with how I was going to line up the field boards against the final picture frame board along the final side of the deck. I knew I wanted the boards to be as tight as the side near the walkway but I also knew that the 18-ft picture frame board we bought had a half an inch bow in it. You can see variances in spacing between boards when there's an eighth of an inch error, and a quarter of an inch would be bad. Half an inch would look wrong.

My friend Steve stopped by and we talked about the deck. He suggested I ignore everything I see and focus simply on what was straight. When I told him I was not sure how to confirm what was straight, he told me to simply pull a string across the joist. I did and discovered part of my problem was that the joist itself had a bend in it.

 in the photo above, you may be able to see how the string is tight against the end of the joist, has a half inch space towards the middle, and then touches the other end. This confirmed the fact our joist itself was not straight and was only leading to confusion regarding what is square.

Fortunately there's a simple solution for that! All I had to do was use my favorite tool, a combination square. Here is what I did....

Step one, figure out what I think the shortest board is. In my case, this will define where all the other boards need to be cut to. 

Step two, determine how far away this point is from the string I pulled earlier.

Step three, add one and 1/4 inches to the measurement since that is the distance between my saw blade and the guide on my circular saw.

Step four, Mark a point on each board that represents this distance. By doing so, I have calculated where I need to make each cut.

So I started off cutting boards one at a time using this strategy. I was using my carpenter square to serve as a fence for my circular saw to keep the cut straight. I was also relying upon each board needing to be cut at a perfect 90°, which the carpenter square allowed me to do.

After four boards, I began to notice I was 1/32 of an inch off of where I thought I should be next to the string line. I discovered each board in my deck is probably 0.5 degree off from perfectly square from the joist. I also know the joist isn't square, so everything was wacky. I knew this would be a problem if I followed the line over 18 ft so I had to come up  with a different plan.

I then switched to a large metal right angle that I acquired from the Correa Middle School wood shop class when it closed over 30 years ago. I basically measured the front and back of the angle to get it at the appropriate distance from my string line. This allowed me to cut three boards at a time which was an improvement over the one board at a time strategy with the carpenter square.

My buddy Ryan came over and saw my dilemma. He mentioned he had an 8-ft long piece of straight aluminum that he used to measure the rocker on surfboards. He let me borrow that. I followed the same strategy and was able to cut nine boards without resetting which dramatically cut down my level of error. This was a way better strategy because it was faster and provided more accuracy over distance.

Basically, using a carpenter square is great if you only need to go straight for about 10 in, but I needed to go straight for 18 ft and that's a whole nother ball of wax when it comes to accuracy.

Today was a success and I owe a lot of it to my friend Ryan and Steve.

On an unrelated note, Michelle and I attended our first mentor orientation meeting at Claremont high School. Michelle and I serve as mentors for a group of 11th grade students. While there, we visited the presidential museum. A teacher at the school has been collecting memorabilia and has artifacts going all the way back to Abraham Lincoln. Apparently the museum itself is nationally known. He even has signed photographs from President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump. See if you can pick up on the dry humor the teacher has from the photo below.

Deck Day 27

My OCD came out today! This morning we installed the remaining deck boards. After that, we cut, sanded, and boiled two more picture frame boards. These cuts prove to be more difficult than I thought because the angles are no longer exactly 45°. One of them was 45 while the other was 45 and 1/2. The second miter joint was similarly off by a half a degree. Unfortunately my miter saw is not able to cut these angles so I had to manually do it with a carpenter square and a circular saw. It involved up a lot of practice on scrap wood but I was able to get the angles to line up the way they needed for the deck to work right.

After that, I started installing plugs in all of the holes along the picture frame boards that have been installed so far. Due to the irregular nature of the color of the wood, I had to oil each plug one at a time to figure out what color it would be. I ended up placing the bistro table from our backyard on the deck, and putting all of the plugs and tools on top of it for easy access.

Once I found the corresponding hole, I then inserted some glue, rotated the plug so the grain of the wood aligned with the board, and then tapped it in with a hammer. I use a piece of scrap wood to finish off the final couple of taps 

This evening Michelle and I enjoyed the sunset on the deck with diesel!

Tomorrow I plan unsanding each plug and then applying an additionaloil to protect it. As for the deck, we're now down to the last board. I'll give JW lumber a call tomorrow to see where we're at with the custom order. Once we have it, we will cut it, sand it, miter in the remaining corner angles, and install it.

Deck Day 26

We finally have a deck we can stand on! I would say we are about 2/3 of the way done with finishing the surface of the deck. Here's what we accomplished today....

We started off by finishing up the install of the joist tape. 

After that, we lined up two of the picture frame boards, the one that goes against the porch and the other that goes along the walkway. These boards don't have grooves in them for the clips. Instead, you use a tool to drill a hole in the board. We spaced the holes 3/4 of an inch from the edge of the board and 13 in apart.

the next step was to remove any sawdust or particles from the hold itself prior to installing the screw.

Later on, we will fill the hole with a wooden plug made from the same wood that the deck was created with. It will be almost invisible by the time we are done.

After we had two picture frame boards in, we began to install the fill boards one at a time. Michelle and got it down to routine...install the clips, push the board into the clips, then use a tool that grabbed onto the joists to hold the board tightly in position.

 prior to screwing things down, we would whack the end of the board with a rubber mallet to make sure it was seated tightly against the picture frame board.

 at that point, Michelle held the tool that put pressure on the board and I walked along the board with a screw gun and tightened everything down. The yellow tool fit over the exposed screw and allows me to quickly stick the screw bit into the screw itself. You can tell the people who make these tools are working with craftsmen who do this all day long.

 once all the screws are in, you unloosen the pressure off of the board with the device, and repeat the process.

After about 4 hours, you get something that looks like this....

 So what's next? We need to repeat the same process for the boards going down the side of the house. We have all the boards laid out, but I need to install the rim joists at the far end and do a couple of other minor tweaks before we're ready to get going.

 Tomorrow I am presenting at a wellness conference so we won't be able to get a full day's working. Hopefully by Tuesday we will have all the field boards and picture frame boards installed except for the one long board that goes along the fence. This board is on special order and should be available in the next couple of days. We will need to sand and oil this board prior to install.

After that, the only thing left to do will be to plug the screw holes with the wooden dowels, sand them down, and apply a little bit of oil to help them blend in with the rest of the wood.

If everything goes right, we should be finished with this project by next weekend.

Deck Day 25

So today started off with a rookie move. We got really excited yesterday and oiled the boards and organized the boards in the pattern we preferred. This morning I woke up and realized we forgot to put the joist tape on. Everything I've read says we need to lay joist tape down on top of the joists to serve as a water membrane between the deck wood. I ended up having to move all of the boards around and apply the tape. That took a while.

While I was at it, I noticed there were some weeds growing up under the deck so I went to Home Depot and purchased some weed abatement cloth. I figured since the boards are out of the way. I might as well cut and install the cloth. 

Maybe I'll need it maybe I won't, who knows but I hope to never look underneath there again.

While I was working on that project, Michelle sanded and oiled the remaining wood that goes along the side of the house. 

Almost all the wood has been sanded and oiled at this point and we're ready to start screwing things down.

Want to know how big our deck is? Here's the dimensions we used when purchasing the weed abatement cloth.

Deck Day 24

We made massive amounts of progress today!

We woke up this morning and decided to cut the 45° angles into the picture frame boards. 

Since I've never done any of this before, I built prototypes using some of our scrap lumber. 

 It looked pretty good so we decided to go for it. We used a speed square to draw the lines and act as a fence for the circular saw.

 Next, one of the picture frame boards needed a notch cut out of it to fit around a drain spout. I had no idea how to do this so I took a break and googled a couple of options. Again, I'm using scrap wood to build prototypes. My first three were disasters.

 finally I figured out how to complete the task. It's a multi-step process.

1. Measure all of your cuts and build a template out of cardboard to test fit.  Draw it out on the board with a pencil but do it on the back side of the wood.

2. Use a circular saw to create multiple cuts into the piece approximately 1/8 an inch apart. Have the cuts stop about a quarter of an inch before where you want the final end cut to be. 

3. Use a chisel to break out all of the small pieces of wood from the cuts. This is the easiest way to quickly remove a lot of wood from the gap.

4. Put your 1/2 in straight router bit into your router and then measure the distance between the end of the bit and the outside guide on the router. Mine is 1 and 3/4 in.

4. Grab a carpenters square and set it on top of where you want the final cuts to be. You're going to use the square as a fence for the router. Add 1 and 3/4 in to all sides of your cut, move the carpenter square as necessary, and clamp it down.

5. Set your router at a quarter inch depth and run it around the hole created during step 2 using the carpenter square as a fence to keep your cut straight. Repeat this process multiple times dropping the bit down a quarter inch each time. After four or five passes, all the material will be removed.

6. Use your 1/8 in rounded router bit to go along the edges of the cut to give them a nice smooth look.

7. Use some sandpaper to sand it down and then apply some wax to the cut to protect the wood.

You end up with this......

I was proud of this cut.

For the rest of the day, Michelle and I sanded every board in the stack. Sanding was a two-step process. I ran across the boards with my old DeWalt orbital sander using 120 grit. Michelle followed me with the new Milwaukee cordless sander that I bought. We had 220 grit on that one and it really gave the wood a nice finish. We sanded all four sides of every board in the main field area as well as the picture frame boards.

After we finished that, we brought out the air compressor and blew down the entire deck because there was sawdust everywhere. We then used a slightly damp cloth to wipe down the tops of the boards to keep them nice and clean. After that,, we applied a protective oil to the deck. The oil is specifically designed for Brazilian hardwood and it provides UV protection to the surface. We applied the oil to all four sides of every board. It took a while but in the end it looks pretty cool.

So what's next? We need to sand and oil the boards going along the side of the house. We'll do that tomorrow. After that, it's time to start the final install process. We hope to start that tomorrow!

Our backs are very sore!