After the structure was up we had a special delivery of our deck material. What the deck was going to be made out of was a big topic of discussion for us, wood vs. composite. There is obviously a big cost difference in the materials but there is also a big maintenance difference between them as well, especially since this is a pretty big deck. Mace was really pushing for composite for a few reasons: 1. He would be the one maintaining the deck 2. There would be less splinters in feet & hands 3. He just thought the material was awesome and wanted to use it. I finally gave in on using the composite material, so point for Mace in the home renovation battles. We got lucky and found a composite material at 84 Lumber that was being discontinued and Mace was able to use his excellent negotiating skills and got it down a bit more so I was happier about using the material. Plus I liked the color the best out of the options we looked at, which is of course what I cared about the most. Its gotta look good!
And here Mace is standing over his loot, he was sooo giddy about the arrival of the material. These were the railings which we wouldn’t need for a few more weeks so we stored them in the basement. Like a kid opening his Christmas presents, he couldn’t wait!!
During week 3 Mace’s Mom & brother were in town for a visit so we put them to work and got all the material moved to the back yard. We hand carried all 100+ boards because it was too long and flexible to fit on the trailer and pull with the tractor. The ones the boys carried were 18 feet long but we also had a bunch of 12 footers that Cathy and I moved.
I had mentioned that during the design phase of the deck that I added more work with the double border detail, point for me in the renovation battles. Normally Mace would just run the deck boards over the edge of the joists, cut them the same length, then put a skirt board over the edges and he’s done. With a border you’re creating constraints on all sides so you don’t have as much flexibility for spacing boards and you have a lot more angle cuts to make instead of straight cuts, making there more room for error. And since its a double border you have to make twice as many of those cuts but I thought a single boarder would look out of proportion for this size deck. Its much, much, much more labor intensive… and if Mace ever has a client that wants this detail he’ll know how to bill for it! Our friend Kyle (who helped with the garage, siding, and window demo) was back again to help us with the deck! Do we have great friends or what?! First the guys had to put in blocking so the outer edges could be screwed into something (more work than if the boards would have run over the edges, and because there were two rows). There was some discussion about the best way to proceed as there are a few ways you can do this and then they moved forward. Here’s the blocking going in and Mace mugging for the camera.
Enough goofing off and get back to work 🙂
Here the guys are working on the other side and the bump out. Making sure there was blocking for all the angles to screw into was a time consuming but necessary step… and this would be why most decks are squares or rectangles!
“It’s so hard to use this nail gun”!! Haha! Its a pretty good shot of what blocking looks like too.
With the blocking done the guys could get started on laying out the border pieces.
I love a man in a tool belt and bandana, what can I say!!
Here’s a nice mitered edge, good work boys!
When we started to see the border take shape and how it would add visual appeal we knew it was going to look awesome once all the hard work was done! And the double boarder was the right choice, even though I think Mace and Kyle were cursing me 🙂
All the border boards had the be secured by screwing them into the face so to make the boards look seamless I had to go around with little fillers and plug up the screw holes. This took me back to my gymnastics days and walking the balance beam… Mace was very worried about me while I was up there but I assured him I still had my cat-like reflexes, even though I’m known to trip while walking all the time! And actually last night I fell and twisted my ankle while getting off the motorcycle… maybe he did have reason to worry, haha!!
Here’s a shot of some with and without the plugs.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought I was a gymnast! They were running the middle board that separated the “dining” and “living” areas of the deck so they could get started on the horizontal boards.
The deck boards use a different fastening system that secures them from the side instead of the face so you don’t see the holes. The system also ensures even spacing between the boards.
They had to start at the far end of the deck to run deck boards because they weren’t sure what the spacing of the boards would end up being, for instance you get to the last board and it needs to be 3 inches wide and you have to cut it down and then it visually stands out that its a smaller than the rest of them. If that had to happen we wanted it closer to the house. You’ll also see in this pic Mace got his planer out. I had mentioned these boards were very flexible, like spaghetti, so they are much less forgiving than wood when they are installed. Unfortunately the wood we used on the joists was inconsistent so Mace spend A LOT of time using his planer and level to make it a flat surface (and this also added to our timeline). We didn’t want any noticeable waves in the boards. By the end of that day we had a mini deck and our first deck party with the Krueger’s that night! And no one fell off 🙂
Weeks 4, 5, & 6 there was very slow progress made on the deck (and that’s when we had a feeling a Sept party wasn’t happening). These pictures and words don’t come close to illustrating the work that actually went into this phase. It was labor intensive, monotonous work that was done after long days at work for a few hours and on weekends while trying to balance having a life as well. Mace decided to re-do the blocking under the border sections because it was tough to catch the very edge of the field boards and the very edge of the border boards based on the joist layout (very technical stuff that I leave to Mace to figure out). There are all sorts of specs recommended when using material and basically you don’t want a screw too close to the edge of a board end so he reworked it all himself. He is a perfectionist so he was being very through and if something wasn’t meeting his expectations he was taking the time to make sure he was happy with it, even if it wasn’t noticeable to others. You can’t fault him for taking pride in his work!!
By the end of week 6 we had one side of deck boards completed and a happy deck builder! Things were starting to take shape and we were feeling like real progress had been made!!!
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