Building a Deck - Day 4 Months Later

Sorry for the delay in posting. We've got the floor of the deck just about finished. Here's some pictures of the progress. Yes, it was cold. And yes, thats snow that fell around 10 October. I should have finished this a long time ago. 

And here's some pictures of the progress on the rest of the rocks. We officially have no more rocks in the street, but need a couple more tons to finish it all off. By the way, Katrina did all of these rocks on her own while I've been TDY all over the place. Pretty good job if I do say so myself. :)

Building a Deck - Day 6 (7, 8, 9, and 10)

Sorry for the delay folks, but here's an update. First, the rains came, and took my beautiful holes that I had dug 4 feet deep and filled them with water, and soon thereafter....mud. So I was a bit upset that I had to RE-DIG my four foot holes. But eventually I did. 

Ben and Liz came over and helped me pour NINE bags of cement into one hole. Four hours later we were done with that one hole and I vowed to make things easier the next day. 

So the next day I filled the holes with rocks and dirt and other things so that the last 3 holes only took a total of 9 bags between them all. :)

Another day I built the beam....

And about this time Katrina moved in. Having a second set of hands was HUGE, and things have been moving along quite well since then. I've put up all the joists, and started throwing some decking on top just to see what it will look like. 

One of the days I had run out of 2x8s that I needed for joists, so while we waiting for Home Depot to deliver it, Katrina and I moved 3 tons of rock. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself. 

So thats all I got for now. I'll try to keep up. 

Building a Deck - Day 5

Alright, so I'm calling the city to have an inspector come out on Tuesday to inspect what I've done on the deck so far. He is supposed to come out and inspect the depth of the holes I dug and that should be about it. 

I finally got the wood attached to the house. Had to make a couple of trips back to Home Depot to get more bolts/washers though. 

Once I pass the inspection, I'll pour the concrete for the footings and start getting the frame up. At least then it might start to look like an actual deck. 

Building a Deck - Day 4 (or 13, but who's counting?)

Two weeks later and all I have to show for it are these stupid holes...

HUGE huge thank you to Jared and Liz who came by to help with the holes. Jared was the other 'man' on the two 'man' auger. Liz was superb moral support and helped find the tape measure every time I lost it. And should anyone dig up the quick-crete tubes, they'll find her lovely handi-work on there as well. Which, by the way, those tubes are 4 feet long. The auger wouldn't even dig holes that deep. So sometime I'll be digging the holes just a little deeper with a shovel. They have to be 42 inches deep so that when the ground freezes in the winter, it doesn't raise the footings up out of the ground. 

So the deck is coming along very sloooowly. Got the permit finally, which is nice. Except that it has even more rules in it that I'm supposed to be following. I really wish I never told them I was building the deck. Everything would have been fine. And MUCH easier to build. But alas, you try to do the right thing....

Taking tomorrow off. I have to bring the auger (gas powered hole digger) back to Ft. Collins and I'll be stopping by a few breweries with the guys while I'm down there. Doing a few tours of New Belgium brewery, etc. Teaching a tactics class sunday morning, then I guess it will be back to work on the deck sunday afternoon. 

Building a Deck - Day 3

So I took the weekend off to go hiking in C-Springs for the Fourth of July. Nice couple of days off, but time to get back to work on the deck. The Zip Tool came this morning while I was transplanting more of the grass around the edge of the concrete slab, so as soon as I finished a side of the grass, I switched gears and went after the siding on the house. 

The siding was relatively quick work, so after I took down the siding and cut some of the siding's edging away from the door, I was able to get a better look at what was underneath it and how everything was going to fit together. I was also then able to splice together two more pieces of the ledger (more on this later). 

So here's a picture of what it looks like now.

I have plastic sheeting over all the exposed parts of the house to try and keep it dry for the next few days as I get ready to attach the ledger to the house. Still no word on the permit. 

Today was a day of ups and downs. It was a good day in that the Zip tool came and I made some decent progress on the deck. It was a bad day because today marked the first day that I had any casualties. Unfortunately, both casualties belong to my thumbs. The first casualty wasn't all that bad. I got a blister on the inside of my thumb from shoveling the grass...

The second one, however, I hesitate to even show a picture because everyone will just make fun of me for being stupid. In fact, I'm not even going to show a picture. Essentially I crushed my thumb with the hammer as I was splicing the two boards together. Not only did I manage to crush it, but the hammer drove the tip of my thumb nail through my thumb, so I sliced it open as well. Awesome. So it was time for a break anyway and I quit for the day. 

Assuming I still have use of my opposable thumbs tomorrow I'll get back to work.

Building a Deck - Day 2

I had to take a couple of days off for two reasons: the first was my sanity. I wanted to make sure I was still resting on my vacation from work. Not that I'm still not going to work every other day trying to get the Air Force to pay me the $25k it owes me, but still. I'm on vacation. The second reason I decided to take a few days off is because I still don't have a permit and I still don't have the Zip tool that I need to take down the siding on the house. That being said, I slowed down the work until everything catches up with itself. 

What I have done in the last 3 days, however is cut the ledger to size. One thing to note, the ledger JUST SO HAPPENS to cross EXACTLY where both the water spicket and the dryer vent come out of the wall. Not only do they cross exactly where the ledger needs to go, but they are EXACTLY tall enough that I had to cut the board completely across. What does this really mean? It means I get to make more joists later on to support the fact that my ledger is now in 5 pieces. 

So the ledger got cut and a couple of the pieces had to be spliced together, so that was pretty quick work. And no, the deck isn't going to be crooked and have steps and whatnot...i just laid the ledger out so you could see approximately where it would go. The next thing I did was I started to work on transplanting the grass from underneath the deck to the very back of the yard where I'm short some grass. Needless to say, I didn't get very far since wet, clay-packed grass is far heavier than sod. But about a third of the total grass that I have to move has been moved, and I imagine I'll get to the rest of it eventually. 

I'm going to be taking another couple of days off here for the Fourth of July holiday. I'm heading down to Colorado Springs on Thursday to climb some mountain (no, not Pike's Peak) with a good friend of mine from college. Then I'll stay down there for 4th of July festivities on Friday.  I will also take the opportunity while I'm down there to go to American furniture warehouse and order a living room set so that it can be delivered by the time my mom and brother get here. So...not much work on the deck will get done this weekend, but by next week both the permit and the Zip tool should get here, so work should progress a little faster. 

In other news, a helicopter landed in my backyard while I was working. Apparently the President needed my advice on something...I don't know. I hardly pay attention anymore. 

Building a Deck - Day 1

So I received the wood yesterday, but since the neighbors had put up TWO posts for their soon to be fence, the forklift couldn't get the wood to the backyard. So I hauled no less than 150 pieces of southern pine from the front yard to the back yard. Which pretty much took all day. Its all covered in tarp to keep it dry while I wait on the permit to come in. 

So the next thing I did was remove a piece of cheap aluminum that was acting as siding underneath the sliding glass door. Good thing we don't have a lot of snow or anything, or the wood underneath it might have started to rot already (sarcasm). 

So what goes here is the ledger, which connects the deck to the side of the house. The ledger will end up going all the way across the house, which means I will have to take down some siding to attach it to the house. This requires a Zip Tool to unlatch the siding. Home Depot doesn't carry it because its considered a 'specialty tool'. So now I'm waiting on Amazon to ship one to me, as well as the permit to actually do anything. 

In the meantime, I'm going to start removing the grass thats around the concrete slab. No sense in having it underneath the deck where it will die anyway. I'm going to attempt to transplant it to the very back of the yard after removing a mass of weeds.

I'm off to Home Depot again... 

Building a Deck - Day 0

So I've decided to build a deck. You might assume, therefore, that I have some kind of experience or expertise in the area. But you would be wrong. Which is why I consider the deck-building experience to be a bit of an adventure. It's something I'll learn as I go, and we'll see what happens. 

Here are a few pictures of the backyard before work begins. The deck will be a 20' x 14' single-level deck that extends out over the existing concrete slab from the sliding glass door. 

Picture of the back of the house where the deck will go:

The deck will extend from 1' in from the edge of the house on the right (so the gutter can still go down to the ground) to 6" short of the window on the left. 

Here is a picture of the hill in the back of the yard. A future wall of some sort will keep the hill from eroding into my yard and act as a rear fence. 

And the side of the house where I'll need to do something to keep everything from washing away:

So its Day 0, and work has yet to begin. I'll try to keep this updated as much as possible as the work progresses. In a perfect world, I'm finished with the deck by the time my mom and brother come to visit around the 3rd weekend in July. Here's hoping...