Happy to report that the deck is ALMOST DONE! My handsome contractor shares the redecking details of the last few days…

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Once the joists were in, I stained them to match the siding…

I brushed the same Sikkens we used before on all the exposed, pressure-treated wood. The stainless joist hangers and the lag bolts in the ledger board really pop against the stain, matching the aluminum flashing around the doors and windows…

Guess we can remove that paint tape pretty soon, eh?

Joe, the  Water Barrier Police, made the magic happen with ice and water tape, aluminum flashing and house wrap to keep water out for years to come…

More of the same at the other end of the deck with the added complication of installation around the heating/cooling lines…

Water sitting on top of the joists, or trapped between the back of the deck boards and the top of the joists can slowly rot the wood. Although we’re using hidden fasteners, they can still provide an avenue for water to enter the joists and rot them. Don’t want that, so Joe cut a bunch of snow and ice tape strips for the top of each joist…

That should keep water off the top of the joists and seal around any fasteners to keep water out…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the deck boards, we chose a wood called Garapa Gold, which is 30% heavier than mahogany and twice as hard. Sort of a poor man’s ipé or teak. It weathers to a nice silvery grey with no maintenance needed — my kind of deck. That means we’ll leave it untreated except for sealing all cuts against moisture penetration…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After all that moisture-blocking prep, the deck board installation could finally begin. I mentioned hidden deck fasteners earlier — Ipe Clip makes them. That black clip slips in a slot you cut into the edge of the deck board with a biscuit joiner (sorry I didn’t capture an image for you)…

 

Then the screw (head conveniently painted black for us already) goes through the little metal insert in the clip at a 45 deg. angle like so…

 

That round red thing is a spacer that keeps the boards evenly apart as we go. The next board gets slots cut in the edge and slips onto the first row of clips, then stuff happens to the new edge, same clips and stuff junk and whatnot. If you’re interested in the installation details, the whole process is here:

 

 

Needless to say, we powered through the deck board installation today in spite of the sweaty 90-degree heat…

A few bits left to make it DONE done but it looks pretty fantastic, right?

On Friday, shenanigans and the deck rebuild continued. The man with the plan fills us in on what he and Joe are up to out there…

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Next up on the deck is the installation of the 2″ x 8″ joists. Joe and I angled them 1/4″ away from the house to ensure that water will drain away rather than sit on the deck boards.

A scrap of wood clamped to the top holds one in place so a joist hanger can be nailed…

The joist hangers are made of 316 stainless steel, as are the nails. Designed for use near salt water, they’ll never rust. We’ll stain the joists to match the stain on the siding and to cover their pressure-treated green. You can see we already stained the ends so that we don’t have to cut in around the hangers…

We installed aluminum flashing to cover the joint between the new plywood and the old cedar…

Flashing tape will be added at the top to ensure that water stays out of the joint.

With the joists all up we can do a little weather proofing and then start applying the decking. The deck material we’ll be using is Garapa Gold, installing it with a system of clips which will leave no visible fasteners and no pathway for water to enter and rot the decking or framing. Cool stuff.

Well, that was a full day’s work. Joists all in! And it’s beginning to look like a deck again…

I mentioned the other day that it’s time to get back to the deck. Holding true to our ADHD remodel strategy, David and Joe are at it again. David will tell us what’s going on out there.

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We finally got going on the deck again. It took a while to get the building permit and then everybody’s schedules had to align. Also, the planets.

On Monday we took delivery of the pressure-treated 2’ x 8” deck joists and two 16” x 1-¾” LVL beams that will make up the load-bearing portion of the new deck…

Then we raised up the two LVLs close to where we needed them…

We cut them to length, set them in place, made sure they were level and then screwed them together with #14 x 2-⅜” beamers in rows of three every 16”. That’s a mouthful to say and took a while, but it’s a big, strong beam now…

“2.0 E – 3100F DF” means something about how much it will deflect (sag). In other words, strong stuff!

We nailed the inside of the beam with 12d galvanized nails in rows of three offset 8” from the beamers on the other side. Then we set the beam in place and attached it to the existing end walls with these brackets and galvanized joist hanger nails…

This wasn’t part of the engineering design but it only took a couple of minutes and didn’t cost much. You can’t build things too stiff! At least in small residential projects.

Then we built a wall on top of the beam out of pressure-treated 2” x 4”s…

The new assembly sits on top of the old 2” x 12” beam which is still supported by the three posts. We left all that in place, making the job much simpler. Once the entire deck is done, we’ll jack it up a pinch, install the steel and then remove the posts. [Here’s the engineer’s plan for making it possible to cantilever the deck as the architect originally intended.]

A layer of ¾” CDX plywood, nailed every 6” with 8d galvanized ring-shank nails, ties all the different components together into one monolithic entity…

Plenty more to do out there. Expect another report soon!