Now that we had a solid foundation for the deck we could start building the structure. With help on the way Mace started by taking off the siding, removing the flood light, repairing a hole, and waterproofing the rim joist so that we could attach the ledger board to the house. He was able to knock this out over the course of a few evenings.
I don’t think you’ll meet anyone as excited for a delivery of wood as a carpenter and with this delivery it signaled that some real building was about to take place!! But first we had to move all the wood around back (which was several trips if you didn’t guess) and my Dad got to test out the tractor.
The next morning it was time for the posts to go up. Mace’s friend Chad (who he builds decks with) was able to help us out with getting the structure up that weekend which was huge because that isn’t a one man job, and my dad was an extra set of capable hands as well. First they had to notch all the posts so that the beams could rest on them.
Next they had to get the posts up right in the holes and stabilized with some temporary blocking against the house to start forming the structure.
After the posts were set and square to the house the first beam could go up and then joists could be run to the house. Team work!!
After all the joists were up on the first row they repeated standing the posts, temporarily bracing them, and then setting the beam on the second row. Then they could sister the joists of the first and second rows.
Next they worked on the angle for the bump out. It was a little tricky and some on the fly calculations were done to get the angle right but they were successful in the end. Ultimately if you don’t get the angel right its going to show when you run deck boards and they could end up looking crooked with the boards running at a bad angle. It would function but wouldn’t be visually appealing.
So after a full days work this is what the structure looked like. Now I’ve never built a deck but Mace has built several so to get a deck this large to this point in a day was a monumental task.
And one that deserved a nice cold beer!
The second day didn’t show as much visual progress and the tedious tasks of reinforcing the structure were getting done. Here Mace was putting the hangers around the joists.
Meanwhile my dad was making gusset plates to reinforce where the beams were spliced. He’s a manufacturing guy so you better believe he’s developed a process to maximize efficiency of any assigned task that requires repetition!
And here’s the installation. They did this on both sides of 8 posts and cut off the excess bolt with a sawzall.
We also poured cement around the posts to secure them into place. Same process we used to pour the footings. We look a little tired don’t we?
Dad decided to enjoy a beer on our “deck” (aka some left over boards laying over joists) while Mace cleaned up his job site… I tell you this man loves a tidy work space! There were all sorts of little jobs of shoring up the structure that Mace addressed but this was our progress during weeks 2 & 3.
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