Summer Deck Project

This spring marked 20 years in our home.  

I have wanted a deck over the patio for, well, 20 years.  

This year was my year!

It started early summer by ripping the bottom courses of siding off the bottom of the house and installing metal flashing.  

Why are projects always so much more complicated than they should be?  

I am just glad that Bruce has a clue about what needs to be done in regards 

to all the details of this sort of thing.  

We had to purchase all the building supplies we would need.

Concrete deck blocks,

Loads of 2x10' pressure treated lumber for the deck joists.

Miscellaneous lumber and the composite deck boards.  

Tons of deck hardware and special screws.

Most importantly was the help.  

All of us got put to work on the deck but the kids were invaluable.

They work really hard and are seriously cheap labor.  ;)

My job was to keep the lemonade flowing, help when they needed an extra set of hands, 

help when it came time to "skin the deck", and to photograph the process.  

Allison got very experienced with the cordless screwdriver.  

What did we ever do before power tools?  

Skinning the deck was my favorite part.  

It is nice to have a job where the progress is really quick - we could skin 

a whole section in a couple of hours with two of us skinning 

and two measuring and cutting boards.  

Every job needs an attentive supervisor.  

Especially one who likes to snuggle during breaks. 

We put up the deck in sections so that we could frame out a section 

and complete it before moving along to the next one.  

This section that wraps around the chimney and extends out into the stairs was the trickiest one.  

The height of the deck extended it to the third step.  

My smart hubs figured out a way to make this happen without having 

to permanently affix anything to the masonry.  

After getting all of this brickwork replaced the last thing we wanted to do was hack into it.  

A visit from the job boss.

Waiting for the next deck boards to be trimmed.  This is section 4 going in.  

Section 4 a few hours later!

We have enjoyed the deck so much already.  

It is really nice to have a dry, shady place right outside the kitchen 

to kick back on nice evenings.  

Why did we wait to long to build this thing?