The day started off with a bang...almost. we woke up to discover that the king palm on our back porch lost a frond which crashed to the ground. No big deal except it almost took out our table on the deck. We looked up and saw a giant seed pod on the palm hanging directly over the glass table. Time to move the table and chairs and saw that thing down.
Now the palm looks nice and clean!
next step was to go out to the front porch and finish installing the fascia and touching up the last minute corners. It's looking good!
today is the first day we officially started working on the final deck surface. We spent some time dragging the deck wood out of the backyard to the front yard and sorting it on the deck itself. We looked at both sides of each board and selected the ones we wanted to use is field boards. We laid them out on the deck and took the remaining three or four boards back to the backyard.
in the photo above, you'll notice a board is missing. That's because we selected this board to be the first one we would prototype with.
We cut two feet off the board using the new blade I bought for the miter saw. The blade is an ultra finish blade with 60t and designed to be used with cutting hardwood. Nice clean cut.
The next step was to cut a 45° angle in the board. This was our first attempt at creating what will eventually become the picture frame corners. Unfortunately, the 10-in saw blade on the miter saw is too small to cut diagonally across the 5 and 1/2-in boards. The good news was I bought an ultra finish blade for the circular saw but the bad news was I bought the wrong size so back to Home Depot I went
After I returned the 7 1/4 inch blade, I purchased the same type but in the 6 1/2 in size that my saw uses, I also picked up an 1/8 inch round router bit. A guy we met at the lumber store recommended we use the bit to round off the edges of the field boards where they meet the picture frame boards...to give a nice final touch.
I had a couple larger router bits that I tested out out but the shape looked funny. The 1/8 inch version I bought was perfect.
After that, I sanded the board with 220 grit paper and then Michelle painted the wax end on the cut as directed by the lumber yard. Finally we did a quick wipe on and off with the penofin wood sealer we plan to use. See below for the result.
basically be practiced everything we will need to eventually do to every other board in our inventory. See below for what the processed board looks like next to the other boards.
The photo below is of the untreated side of the same board so you can tell the difference in color.
Tomorrow we're going to finalize the final length of the field boards for the deck and start sawing wood!
