Saturday, July 16, 2011

One Landing Down, One Landing To Go

It was unbearably hot today. What should have taken maybe 2 hours max, ended up taking all day.

The landing deck is completed (except for nailing down the last board). We have the same landing deck to complete on the south side (kitchen) tomorrow.We did lose some time today going to Home Depot to buy 5/4 boards and more joist hangers. We also took several very long breaks to cool off and eat. Tomorrow will be free of a Home Depot run so we should be able to start earlier in the day.

I used an air grinder with a sandpaper wheel to put a slight bevel on the cut end after we cut the deck boards to the correct length.
I tried to mimic the radius on the factory edge. This helps when the boards shrinks after drying out. That is the reason R and I did not put a gap between the deck boards. By this time next week there will be a 1/16th of an inch gap. When we were laying the deck boards at B & G's a couple of years ago, the gaps showed up by the next day. If we started out with a 1/16th of an inch gap and then the board dried and exposed another 1/16th on each side of the deck board, we would have at least a 3/16ths of an inch gap. Hopefully this way we will end up with somewhere between 1/16th and 1/8th of an inch gap maximum.
This new landing is in much better scale to the over deck size and the size of the house. The previous deck configuration just had steep steps coming off the back of the deck. This new landing will allow for a two step stairs which is much easier to navigate than four steps with a shaky hand rail.
The next 7 days calls for 90+ degrees every day AND no rain in sight. Egads my tomato plants will never survive.

2 comments:

  1. I'm not liking these summers of late.

    Also, looks like you're scrapping paint off the house. Another not fun job.

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  2. It takes us twice as long to even a simple task.

    ReplyDelete

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