The pictures of the deck; some new, some old, and some work in progress.
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For the first time I put captions on the pictures, though I ran out of things to say at the end. Let me know if it worth the few minutes it took me to add them.
I'm also trying out something new with this photo album; the slideshow feature. Try it out and let me know what you think. I'm curious how this would fit in with a normal visit. I would hope it doesn't take the place of actually viewing the real images and instead more of a complimentary feature.
For those who didn't know here's a little background on this project:
When we bought the house back in 2004 the first thing I wanted to do was replace the deck. It looked terrible, felt squishy in some places and obviously wasn't going to last much longer. The plan was the rip off one of the boards the day we moved in and use it to pick replacement boards down at home depot. We already had a big moving truck so using it to haul deck boards was going to work out perfect; two birds, one stone. Well when that day came I went over to pry one of the boards off and ended up breaking my hammer. The head just ripped right off, it's made of metal but I guess it wasn't strong enough to be used like a pry bar. That was just the start of the days troubles and it turned out there was no time that day to go to Home Depot.
After moving in there were too many other projects. Most were alot more urgent than replacing a deck that still functioned. We painted it so at least it looked better. For awhile the plan was we wouldn't mess with it until one of the boards broke. Surprisingly it lasted a few years with no issues, though we did avoid stepping on the problem spots. Many of you may not have even noticed since we always arranged a table or chairs over these areas so no one could step on the weakest boards. Finally this summer, after we had already done most everything we had set out to do with the house, we decided it was time to replace the deck.
The original plan was that I would do everything so I needed to keep the plan as simple as possible. My original idea was to just remove all the boards and supports and just replace them all building the exact same method as before. I was hoping to use a composite wood like Trex but the price was too high to justify. Plus the design would have been much more complicated since the support structure would have to be improved since Trex is much more flexible than wood. We ended up going with Cedar and staining it with a Semi-Transparent redwood color. My uncle and his son in law who are deck building gurus, among other things, came down to help along with my brother and father. The idea for the 'picture box' design was originally thought of to more efficiently use the wood. We were only able to get 14 foot boards and the deck is 15ft by 18ft. The plan was to use 2 sections of board to get the 18ft that we needed. By re-orienting the boards in the other direction and framing it with the box around the outside we were able to use the boards at close to their original length. I think 1/8 of an inch had to be cut off each deck board so virtually no waste at all.
