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...