Cerulean Cordillera

Posts Tagged ‘Deck’

Ah, long time no blog. Well, there were a few reasons behind the long drag for me to update again. The first was the fact that after we moved in, we didn’t have Internet for a few days. After we got Internet, it was still quite inconvenient for me to blog for not having a stable computer that I’d always use. A week later, I bought my $1500 computer and managed to put it together, though it took another week before I managed to add in a memory card reader unit in order to download photos from my camera, and after that, I started writing an entry.

The entry was basically a discussion of my current views on how to live a life. It turned out to be quite a sizeable entry and it still needs quite a bit of work before it’s publishable. Meanwhile, I have something else to tell you guys about today, and that is my deck project.

You see, our house came with a deck in the backyard, but that deck must have been built at least a decade ago, for now it is structurally rotten and covered with dirt and grime. At certain places, the boards would sink down the moment you step on them, thus making it so that if you ever put your full weight on such boards, you’d stumble and likely crack the wood. Yes, it’s a safety hazard, and that is the most important reason why I wanted to do something about it.

New Deck Boards

But what to do exactly? One thing we could have done is basically to tear it down and redo the deck, but that would require a budget outside of what we can dish out at the moment. So instead, what we decided to do is to get pressure treated boards and pave a new layer of deck surface onto the existing boards. If the original deck board orientation can be called horizontal, our new boards would now be vertical. This way, each board would be held up by a few inches from all other existing boards. Considering that out of all other existing boards, about 80% of them are pretty good in terms of strength, this vertical alignment should be very stable.

Initial Materials

So, what did we need?

• Pressure treated deck boards
• Deck Screws
• Hand Drill

After hunting on craigslist, I managed to buy 30 pressure treated deck boards (2″x6″x8′) at half the price stores like Home Depot would’ve charged me. It still costed me about $120, plus ten more bucks for shipping. Nontheless, the wood got here. We moved it into the house to protect them from the rain that lasted several consecutive days.

Measurements

The deck is about 10 feet wide and 12 feet long, and the boards we got were 8 feet per board, so either we’re not going to do a good covering job, or we’ll need to cut the boards to smaller pieces. I drew up the plans for the new deck covering, it will be 11 feet along the shorter side, made up of 8 foot boards 3 foot boards, and we will use about 20 boards across the long side. It will not cover the entire deck, and instead will leave a lower walkway from the basement deck steps to the stairs toward garage. Perhaps pictures are better for illustrating this design:

What The Deck Used To Be

What The Deck Was Going To Be

Final Materials

Since we needed 3 foot boards, we definitely needed a way to cut them, so the final list of materials are below:

• 20 2″x6″x3′ pressure treated deck boards
• 20 2″x6″x8′ pressure treated deck boards
• Deck Screws
• Hand Drill
• Any saw that can cut the wood

A Mitre Saw

Thanks to my friend Charlie, I managed to borrow both the hand drill and a mitre saw. I didn’t take any pictures of the mitre saw, but it looks awfully similar to the saw to the right, so you can get an idea of what it is. I then drove to Home Depot and got a box of 3 inch deck screws. There were 250 screws in the box, which should be just a little bit more than enough if I plan to use six screws per board.

Cleaning The Old Deck

The first step was to clean the old deck. As I mentioned before, the old deck has been lacking in maintenance since forever, and most of the surfaces are either rotten or covered in dirt and grime. To make sure that the new deck surface is long lasting and nothing disgusting builds up underneath, we decided to clean the old deck surface. To do so, we connected our water hose and started blasting water onto the decks, and scrubbed it with an old broom that we found. After about an hour of work of both scrubbing and blasting it with the water hose, we managed to get rid of all dirt and grime for the surface that we were going to work on.

The effect was amazing. What used to be a mostly black and dirty deck all of a sudden turned into a deck with almost white wood. The wood actually didn’t look too bad. We waited for two more days for the deck to completely dry, before starting to add new wood.

Wood of Various Sizes

Cutting The Wood

Setting up the saw we borrowed from Charlie went less smoothly than we first envisioned. The box came with no instructions, so we screwed on the lose parts only by matching with the whatever marketing picture we saw on the box. It took us a while to figure out how to turn the saw to the right angle and to move the sawblade up and down. We eventually figured it out, and from then on, cutting the wood went very smoothly. We now have our wood ready.

It is now time to do some calculations on some fine details.

Calculations

In the rough plan, the boards are going to be placed right next to each other. However, any deck project should leave at least a quarter of an inch gap between each deck board to allow for wood expansion and to drain water should it rain. Hence, we did some calculations on precisely how wide the new deck surface should be. We came up with the number 117 and a half inches. However, when we actually laid down the boards, this number wasn’t used at all.

Screwing Down The Short Row

Clamping Down The First Board

In order to ensure that the boards are strong, the short row of 3 feet wood should be closer to the root of the house, whereas the longer row of 8 feet wood would cover the rest. This way, the (roughly one foot) overhang at the end of the old deck would have more support. Since we planned it this way, it would make sense for us to start from the root of the house, and thus we would first prepare the short row as opposed to the long row.

The very first board is very important, as its positioning is what all other board’s positioning will be relative to. To make sure that the position doesn’t shift, we clamped it down onto the old deck before hammering and drilling the screws. Afterwards, we left roughly a quarter of an inch of space between the next board, and aligned it with the previous board/end of deck, and continued in this fashion. After about two hours of work, the short row was finished.

The Pipe

Dealing With The Pipe

There was a water drainage pipe that leads from the roof of the house, down its walls, and slanted onto the ground. This pipe prevented us from laying long wood on the leftmost edge of the deck. As a result, we had to raise it. It turned it to be easily raised.

Screwing Down The Long Row

After that, we started working on the long row. By this time, it was already the middle of the afternoon. Working in the sun was really tiring, but after two more hours, we finished the entire deck.

Some parts of the new deck surface needs some more screws, but for now, it feels very sturdy and strong. I even tried to jump full force onto the overhang at the edge of the old deck, and it held like a rock – nothing shaky. The safety hazard from the previous deck has now been entirely solved.

What would we do with the uncovered deck? Well, right now I’m thinking of getting some outside carpets and just put it over that part, but we’ll have to wait for the Landlords to remove the grill first (I think they want it back), so that’s all left for after September starts.

Meanwhile, here are the finished pictures:

Final Result: From The House

Final Result: From The Garden