Deck Debacle: Day 3

The summer weather pattern held for a day, and we had some good progress over the course of the evening. As a side note, it's funny to see 16 foot long boards hanging out of the back of a Honda Odyssey minivan. As totally un-cool as owning such a vehicle is, I am finding that it may actually be the most practical vehicle on the planet. In the 6 years we have had this one, it has hauled us 120,000 miles, been a faithful kid hauler, a cycling Sag Wagon, moving van, and now has done a fine job as a lumber hauling truck. Perhaps if I installed a massive stereo system in it, the stars would align and I would think it was cool? Nah...




The project, as you can see from the pictures, was to now install the extended floor joists. This was made complicated by the fact that they had to line up with the level of the deck we had, and we wanted to extend them into the yard at varying lenths to produce a curved end to the deck. To accomplish this the joists had to go over the not-very-level set of railroad ties the builders installed as a retaining wall. This meant that each board had to be custom notched to fit over the wall at that certain point while remaining level to the rest of the deck.


We sawed and banged and bolted until about 9:30pm.

Sorry neighbors...what goes around comes around.

Yes, they worked on building their deck for days in the early morning hours. They were hammering away at 6:30am and even now consistently mow the yard at that hour while I am trying to get the kids to stay asleep for a few moments more.


Next, the support posts and concrete.

Yes, normally you put the posts in first... I am backing my way into a level deck surface instead of building the frame around support posts that I would invariably have less than level when I tried to mount the floor joists to it.

Alas, there probably won't be any more stories on this for a couple of days because I have to coach Bryce's baseball team for the game tonight and there is practice tomorrow night. Wait, did I just hear a collective cheer that there weren't going to be more stories? Nah, couldn't be...