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.