Deck Building - Day Three

Day three was the "You're on your own, kids" day.  It was just me and J working up a storm on the deck.  But it was a very productive day.  There was a lot less measuring, so it seemed like the work moved a lot quicker.

Our main goal was to get all of the support beams up.  These are the beams that run with the decking and sit on the posts.  These are where the joists will sit (Joists run perpendicular to the decking).  These are what give the deck the main support.

And what was the first thing we had to do?  Measure.  We had to measure how long the first one would be and then try to make sense of all the boards we had.  We planned our deck at Menards and ordered our material from the deck plans we made there.  You would think that they would tell you which boards to use where, they didn't.  So it was like putting together a Lego Ferrari without the instructions.

Once we figured out what boards went where, it was time to get working.  Like I said before, the support beams support (go figure) the deck, so they need to be beefy.  You do this by taking two 2x8 and screwing them together.  Then you are left with a big old board to support your deck with.

These boards get attached to your posts.  So after we would put two boards together, we would set it on top of the posts and screw it down.  You use special bracket for this so that bad boy's not going anywhere.

This process didn't take that long.  The longest part was the 45 degree sides.  That took a little bit of planning before hand.  But overall, this wasn't that difficult and we were done with the support beams by lunch.  Which was the first time all weekend that we actually had time to sit down and eat lunch.

After a quick lunch of left over Japanese (nom nom), we headed back out to start installing the joists.  These are pretty easy, but there are a lot of them, so they took time.

The joists would go in the bracket and then we would measure the end to make sure they were straight.  Once they were straight we would attach them to the support posts with a bracket.  I've learned there are a lot of different brackets when you build a deck.

We got about half of the joists installed before we had to call it a night.  So not to bad for a days work.  And look at all we got done in three days.  Amazing.  I mean we're like 70% done already.  That's pretty awesome.  We're hoping that we can finish this baby up by next weekend.  Okay, not finish, but get the decking on by next weekend.  Then comes that task of figuring out how to install stairs, and benches, and a privacy wall, and a pagoda.  But we'll be happy with decking by the weekend.