Here we are again...this post is a compilation of little bits and pieces of progress we have made with the deck over the last five or six weeks. It's been stop start for a number of reasons, but if you look at it all together, we're starting to get somewhere.
The first sequence of work started on a Sunday morning around 10:00 am when we barreled out onto the deck straight after breakfast. One extra board has been installed in the first photo:
This is at the end of the same day: All the boards installed, and all tidied up before teatime! A significant milestone achieved!
I cut some strips of 3/4 inch plywood and installed them with a mixture of lexel and 18 gauge pin nails.
First couple of strips installed:
Continued all the way above the front of the garage. The other sides/edges of the deck have their own challenges, so we'll be coming back to those areas later.
The somewhat irregular gap between the lower edge of the plywood strips and the stucco was filled with expandable foam. It's worth noting that the foam cures via exposure to water vapor in the air; curing time can be vastly reduced by misting water over the foam with a plant sprayer.
After curing, the excess foam was trimmed off with a razor blade and beads of lexel were applied where the plywood meets the deck boards and over the top of the foam:
And then....do all that again with some 1/2 inch thick plywood; this time I applied lexel at the top and bottom edges of the plywood. The plywood now protrudes very slightly beyond the stucco. This section is now ready for the fascia board and gutters to be installed, and then I can trim the deck boards to their final size.
But before that, I need to do essentially the same thing at the front-facing edge of the deck. This area is a little bit more complicated because I am working parallel to the deck boards, and I need to incorporate a transition into the steps.
And there's another thing! The penultimate deck board has been sloped correctly and trimmed, but not actually installed:
I need to install blocking below this board so that the posts which hold the perimeter enclosure can be fastened to a secure base. The deck board slopes by one 1/8 inch per foot, so the blocking also has to slope.
I made each block from a piece of 2" x 6" lumber which I trimmed to the correct length and then placed in position. I drew pencil lines on the front and rear of the block which aligned with the spacers I installed previously. I connected the pencil lines across both sides of the block with a straight edge, which gives a cut line. The diagonal cuts were made (slowly) on the band saw. This would have been much more time consuming with conventional tools...
All blocking installed:
Added the first edge spacer which consists of a piece of pressure treated 2" x 4" timber which has been planed flush with the top of the blocking and attached with construction screws. Professional carpenters call this alignment Flush-On-Top (FOT). The small gap between the blocking and the first spacer was filled with expandable foam and the excess removed after curing.
Installed the penultimate deck board and began installing the next layer of spacer blocks which were added in sections:
At this point the edge of the deck substructure is essentially flush with the stucco:
It is worth pointing out that it was absolutely $#%&ing baking hot while this work was going on. Most of the rest of this post was accomplished either in the mornings or after 5 pm when being outside was just about bearable.
The ledger consists of a 2" x 8" pressure treated board which was attached to the deck structure with 5.5 inch construction screws and glued to the stucco with lexel:
To account for the width of the deck boards, I actually needed the ledger to be 3/4 inch thicker. I made up the difference with timber cut from a 4" x 4" post that was salvaged from the old deck. This material was attached to the ledger board with lexel and pin nails:
I was planning to reuse the old stringers, but two of them were seriously busted up. I ended up buying an eight-foot length of 2" x 12" PT and cutting out two new stringers. I used the best old one as a template:
The two new stringers were installed at the outside of the stairs which means the older ones will not be seen. There is a slope across the stairs that follows the same gradient as the deck, so I had to take that into account when I installed the stringers.
The first bits of fascia board were installed to the left and right of the stairs:
This is later after I went over all the stringers with wood preserver. It looks green initially but dries brown after a week or so.
Next up is installing what will be the last deck board. I need to cut the edge channel off of this board at the sections which do not overlap with the top step. The bulk of the excess material was cut away with the jigsaw. The final little bit had to be sanded off, so I modified my sawhorses to hold the board on its edge:
Perhaps you can guess where the scrap wood I used came from?
This is how the board looks after fine tuning and installation:
Added the risers to the stairs first:
This is how the stairs look with all the risers and treads installed:
