Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space. Posts formerly holding up our deck are now completely removed.
Remember this?
When the boys pulled out the jacks, we were left with mysterious hanging posts for a while…
Cut off but not actually touching the ground. Mysteeeeeeerioussss…
David and Joe finally pulled out the posts they had sliced a few weeks back. So now we’re not only officially cantilevered, it actually looks like we’re officially cantilevered!
Magic! It’s happening!
I apologize for my lapse in posting. Slammed with work again and it’s playing havoc with the bloggy. Let’s catch up, shall we?
David and Joe just wrapped up work on the deck. We left off with them installing the steel to cantilever the deck. This was the state of things immediately after…
Time to replace the siding on the inside walls of the deck. The boys started by priming and then staining the cedar to match what’s on the walls below…
As before, Joe nailed on Cedar Breather, which allows the wood to dry from behind. Then, one by one, the freshly stained boards went on…
Before I show you how it all turned out, let me remind you of its former life in a dingy shade of drab.
This is what it looked like out there in March as it was being deconstructed…
Now there’s a chance that powdery sage green looks great on some other house and just not on this one, I’ll grant you that. Having grown up on an Air Force base, I can tell you that this is a shade from my childhood, requisitioned by the military in bulk. It was everywhere. And clearly I am biased against it.
But I blather.
Let me show you how to do justice to this house…
Wow. The beautiful wood now looks like beautiful wood.
Bulky, unnecessary trim is eliminated.
Crazy angular wing walls finally get the emphasis they deserve.
Great job you guys! Looks fantastic — and will look even better once that Garapa Gold decking fades to silver. Psyched. The cap on top of the railing (exact material TBD) will be added after the outside envelope of the house gets re-sided.
I like how the dark wood really grounds the house and frames the view now…
I’ve been picturing a future in which the walls of the living area are lined in dark walnut built-ins that blend (almost) seamlessly into the dark wing walls…
I can see it. Can you?
Now… who would like to join me for a toast on the deck?
This is it. The rotting deck is rebuilt, the house has been prepped and waiting for the steel for the last month, and now comes the big climax. That cantilever we started talking about in May is on, baby!
Before David explains, let me remind you of this…
That’s the drawing our engineer provided (click to biggify it) as a way for us to remove the posts and cantilever the deck. To recap a previous post:
So, can I introduce you to the steel?
Steel, reader.
Reader, steel…
Now that the niceties are out of the way, take it, David!
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Rhode Island Welding custom-made the steel our engineer specified for us (complete with pre-drilled holes as you can see above), and last week Joe and I installed it.
First, we drew exactly where the steel brackets (or cups) would fit into the existing deck structure…
Then we put up a story pole — the 1”x1” stick that Joe’s about to put a screw next to — that would serve as our marker for the proper height of the deck structure once the posts were cut away.
Here’s Joe cutting the 4” x 6” post so that we could jack the deck up slightly — we want the deck to settle back down to its original height after we set it on the steel. The bottom of the story pole is taped to the concrete footing with blue tape…
After that, installation went fairly quickly.
Once in, the steel cup catches the bottom of the deck and the strap transmits the load up and spreads it across the house framing…
32 galvanized bolts, each ⅜” diameter by 4” long, hold it all together across each framing member as planned…
This week, Joe and I will take out the remnants of the posts and the deck will be fully cantilevered as originally intended!
David and Joe have been prepping for the installation of the steel that will cantilever our deck. For the last few days, they’ve been removing the siding on the forward third of the house. David reports: “You can see that the original construction paper didn’t keep out moisture very well. The nails heads all show rust trails…”
“Above, you can see on the lower right where the deck structure was repaired with pressure treated plywood in the ’80s. However, the object should have been to keep water out, not make a structure that could survive moisture penetration.”
Look what Joe found etched underneath the siding…
Nice.
More from David: “Cutting the aluminum nails they used to install the siding in ’72 turned out to be easer than punching them in. I have a lot of respect for the carpenters that used these soft nails!”
Once the boards were off, the boys added house wrap to keep water out temporarily — eventually all the walls will receive 3″ of foam insulation like the deck-end of the house did…
With that done, attention turned to the inner walls of the deck…
Now that the new LVL beams are in, the deck is rebuilt and the wall height raised to code, the siding that goes on the inner walls can go up. David and Joe began staining it dark to match the siding below the deck…
Looks to me like they’ll be busy…
The saga continues… but not today. Today the boys are taking a break.
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?
And 100% more usable than it has been for the last six months!
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!
Finished just yesterday, the floor downstairs has to dry for 10 days, which makes this the perfect time to re-deck the undeck.
As you may recall, the rotting deck was pulled out on November 15 and its replacement has been on hold since the end of March while we waited for our engineer to get back to us. So we’ve been living with a harrowing two-story step from the upstairs slider for the last 5 and a half months…
In all that time, nobody tried to step out onto the deck. Good thing.
Today Joe and his nephew Josh started dismantling the exterior of the deck…
The plan is to do some spelunking on the inside of that wall in order to see what the structure detail is.
The engineer drew up a concept for supporting the deck without the posts, which David says he’ll share with you tomorrow… The question is how much rejiggering will the current structure need in order to accommodate the engineer’s design. A little? Or a lot?
Let’s see, what’s been going on at the homestead since I last had time to share?
Removing the siding on the inside of the deck surround…
Turns out the wall on the west side of the deck was completely soggy to the point of rotting…
It absolutely reeks of mildew and was covered in slimy goo. Gross. The wood on that side is not salvageable, unfortunately. Especially once you add in the carpenter ant damage…
They love wood that’s been softened up by poor drainage. Luckily we got rid of the ants right after we moved in.
So where does that leave us? The walls are temporarily covered in housewrap to keep out the spring rains…
And now there’s a slight pause in the rebuild of the deck while we wait for the engineer to chime in. On what, you ask? Biggify this and check out the deck as the architect imagined it in 1970…
Cantilevered. No supports.
Compare that to how it actually got built a year later…
A single post stuck in the middle. Well, not exactly the middle — slightly off-center so that it wouldn’t interfere with coming and going through the lower slider. Weird.
Compare that to how it looks now…
At some point, posts were added to either end in addition to the one in the center. David and I think this looks a little clunky and have always imagined we’d try to go back to Irving Hayne’s original vision if possible. Next week, Eric over at Structures Workshop should come back to us with drawings and we’ll find out if we can make it happen. Good man. We’ve tapped him more than once for this remodel.
Progress, people! On the front of the house, Joe and David made and added the flashing to the upstairs windows and slider to match what they did on the lower level…
And now the siding is done, top to bottom…
Wait, is that SUNSHINE reflected in the upstairs window? IT IS!
The blue tarp that’s been up since well before Thanksgiving finally came down!
One…
Two…
Three! No more tarp!
I can’t tell you how happy I am to no longer be in the abyss!
Next: the soffit will get closed up…
After that, David and Joe will turn their attention back to the downstairs. They’re going to install the cork on the floor and ceiling. Then it will be time to rebuild the deck.
I still can’t get over being able to see the view…
Just in time for spring!