What's a deck for?

Wonder what Michelle and I do with our new 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.