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6/11/2005 

While waiting for the official "ok" from the city in the way of a building permit, we went ahead and demolished the old one one today.  It was pretty amazing how quickly the old came down:  With the help of one of Tim's coworkers, it only took about 2 hours to go from a functional deck to a pile of lumber.

A casualty of the new deck is the flowering rose bushes that flanked our old deck.  Unfortunately, they were just beginning to flower the day we cut them back.  At the time of this writing, they are still intact (but cut back).  However, the placement of these bushes (by the previous owner) was never ideal.  They would grow up and through the deck, took lots of space on the ground near the deck edges, and the like.  With the new deck, they would literally be living totally underneath it, which would not be ideal.  We're not sure if we'll be able to move them or keep them in the current location...  (9/14/05 note:  We were able to move them to the other side of the house.  The move was very hard on them but I think they'll pull through...)

Dismantling the railings took only a few minutes.

Removing the decking was a little tougher, but still didn't take all that long.  In this picture, we were down to the main beam and posts, and one final joist.

Here's the completed demolition.  We're leaving the ledger board on until we're ready to put the new one up, since that would essentially leave an exposed hole in the siding.

Even though we couldn't save the rose bushes (for this year, anyway), we were able to save a robins nest that was built under the old deck.  The babies had just hatched and were very tiny.  Tim placed the nest in the rose bush 'stub' directly below where the nest had been under the deck.  The parents were flying around nervously looking for it, but eventually found it and appear to be adapting to the new location.

6/12/2005

I hauled the huge brush-pile from the rose bushes to the city yard waste site.  Then I started working on getting rid of the piles of old deck lumber laying around from yesterday.  I had to cut down a bunch of the pieces to fit into our little 4x8 trailer.  The trailer soon filled up, and then I ended up cutting down some of the pieces even further so I can get them into the back of our SUV so I can haul everything to the dump in one trip.  Tomorrow we need to make some phone calls to see where it's all going.  I'm keeping a few deck boards for use as temporary bracing, batter boards, and the like.

So far, continued good news on the robin's nest front -- the birds (mother, father, and babies) seem to have adapted well to the new nest location in the "rose bush stub".  I was concerned that the birds had little shade in their new location, so I rigged up a piece of cardboard in the bush to block the intense western sun (the morning sun shouldn't be as much of a problem).  I was scolded profusely for going near the nest to do this, and also while working on the woodpile.  Hopefully, the birds will get used to us working around them and begin to trust us.  Heck, depending on how long the building permit takes, the babies might even fledge before we get much more work done.

6/22/2005 

One step forward, two steps back was the theme of the past few days.  Yesterday I decided to do the layout for the posts/footings on the new deck so we can prepare to dig them.  Upon doing this, it became clear that I really needed to get the new ledger board hung first, since I could use that as a reference for all posts, and the new deck is almost twice as long as the old one.  

Upon removing the old ledger board, we found a terrible site -- water had seeped down beneath our patio door, for who knows how many years, and completely rotted out a large chunk of the rim joist supporting the back of the house, as well as the deck.  I took today off and we ended up tearing siding off from the rim joist down to the foundation, finding a lot of rot.  After spending the morning researching the proper way to replace the rot (and support the house in the meantime, I (with Cathy's help, when William would allow) cut out the rot, rebuilt the wall below, and replaced the bad section of rim joist, providing for a solid foundation for the house and the new deck.  Tomorrow I need to  finish up by replacing a small portion of sill plate for the wall above the rotten joist.  

6/25/2005 

Yesterday, after work, I proceeded on with the repairs of the rotted wall.  Everything went reasonably well, but I was in a hurry to get everything closed up and the siding replaced before dark hit, as some thunderstorms were predicted.  Unfortunately, haste makes waste, and I stepped down hard on a board with a nail sticking out -- OUCH!  To make a long story short, I ended up visiting the doctor this morning and getting a wonderful tetanus shot, some antibiotics, and it looks like I'll be doing very little work on the deck this weekend as I can barely walk right now.  Bummer.

In case you're wondering about our Robin's nest, that has a bit of a dramatic story as well.  Of the four original eggs, we ended up with two babies. I'm not sure if the other two birds died very early on (there appears to be four in the picture above) but I never saw more than two the next time I checked the nest.  Of the two remaining birds, they did very well until a bad thunderstorm on Monday -- which washed out the bottom of their nest.  I came back from work to find them stuck in the rosebush below -- healthy, but unable to move much.  Fortunately, I had removed a 'backup' empty nest from the deck when we tore it down -- it was still available for use by our bird family.  Dislodging the birds from the rose bush was interesting...  The parents just didn't understand my intent, and the little birds would cry out when I touched them, and 3 or four robins dive-bombed me (and Cathy) as we tried to help.  Fortunately we got them removed, transported to the new nest, and all was well.  On Wednesday, one of them fledged, and yesterday the second left the nest.  I'm glad they seemed to survive and won't be bothered by us building the new deck.  Hopefully they'll feel welcome and build a new nest under our new deck next year.

 6/27/2005 

Well the foots still sore, but feeling much better.  Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate today, so instead we drove up to Lowes and placed our order for the majority of the deck supplies.  It should be here in a week or so -- in the meantime we need to pick up a few of the longer boards, including the ledger board, from Menards as Lowes didn't carry 20' boards. 

We're still not totally weatherproof, and the hard rains tonight proved it.  I have plastic covering the section where the ledger is supposed to go, and the leaky patio door is evidently still leaky as well-- we had some water seep in the lower level (not much, but enough to make me nervous).  I really want to get the new ledger up and everything flashed and calked and then I'll feel much better.  The next step is to get the utilities marked and the footers dug -- then we can have the first inspection!  

7/6/2005 

Next we set out to install the new ledger board.  Before installing the board, we spent a lot of time working on the flashing for the door and ledger.  The previous deck and door was not installed correctly, causing the rot mentioned above.  We won't be replacing the door yet (maybe next year) so I wanted to do my best at making sure this never happened again.  You can see some of the flashing in the picture-- we still have siding work to complete when the decking goes in place.  Putting the actual ledger up went  pretty smoothly considering it was just Cathy and I, and it was an almost 20' long 2x10" board.  We established the correct height and a level line with a laser level, lifted the board in place, tacked it temporarily with some long screws. then attached it permanently with lag bolts.  Our new deck will extend past the edge of the house by about five feet, and the overhanging portion will eventually be supported by poles and beams.  For now, we used an old 2x4 to support the edge of the ledger. 

In the above picture, you can also see the layout lines we placed.  Once the ledger was in place, we took careful measurements using the ledger as a reference, and laid out the locations for all of the beams, posts, and footers.  It was a bit tricky (working around the rose bush stubs didn't help) but we finally got it accurate enough.

7/12/2005 

Now that we had the footing locations marked, the next step was to get them dug.  Our deck design requires 7 footings at 12" diameter, and code requires them to be at least 42" deep.  With this amount of digging, and our hard clay soil, we decided to rent a power auger.  Enlisting the help of a couple of friends (and choosing a very hot and muggy Saturday to get it done) we were able to get them all dug in about 3 hours, taking many water breaks!  

Once this was complete, we needed to wait for the footing inspection to happen before proceeding.  One issue we had was that our area has a very high water table, and most of our holes started filling with ground water shortly after being dug (some actually had water in them while digging).  Upon the inspector's advice, we removed all water with a shop-vac, added several inches of river rock, and tamped it down well to give the footings a good base.  

7/13/2005 

Today, with yesterday's successful passing of the footing inspection, we set out to pour the concrete footings.  First we placed the concrete forming tubes in the holes, supporting them with boards and leveling them properly, using the layout strings to make sure they were properly centered.  Then, with some enlisted help and a rented concrete mixer, we set out to mix and pour about 3500 pounds of dry concrete mix.  The mixer worked very well -- it was designed so that you could mix, then wheel it up to the footing and dump it right in.  (Note that the picture looks like we're dumping dry mix in the hole, but actually Paul was using the empty bag as a "funnel" to get the wet mix into the tube).  We did have an issue with one forming tube breaking free of its boards about 2/3 of the way through the pour -- try as we did we couldn't get it raised back up into position with all that concrete weight.  This footing will be several inches lower than the others, but should still work out fine -- we'll be cutting each post individually anyway.  The work was a bit backbreaking, but the completion of this was a major milestone -- now we can start building up!

7/18/2005 

We were out of town for the weekend, but I did manage to backfill the footings before we left on Friday and after we got back Sunday.  The clay soil makes for difficult backfilling -- I'll be working more with a hose later on, but at least they're pretty good for now.  

Tonight after work, I set out to get the posts installed.  Fortunately William was pretty cooperative and came outside and allowed Cathy to help out.  We positioned the post brackets on the footings and bolted them down, then cut the posts to rough size, and installed them one by one, bracing them temporarily.  The layout strings again played an important role in this task, and a post level was our constant companion.  

As you might also see from the picture, I also was able to start installing the joist hangers.  Finally, we used our laser level to mark the correct height on all of the posts.  The next task will be to cut the posts off, and start installing the beams.  It sure is nice to finally have something (besides the ledger board) above ground!

7/23/2005 

Lots of visible work happened this week!  Once we had the posts installed, we started work on the beams.  Our deck plan includes three beams.  Two are relatively small, and hold up the stairway landing and the area where the ledger board extends beyond the house.  The third beam extends the 19'6" length of the entire deck.  The small beams were easily installed by us, but the large one is made up of 3 2x10's and was quite heavy, so we had to recruit some help.  

The help came on yesterday, and the beam was placed rather quickly.  Once it was secured in place, we immediately started placing the joists over the beams.  We finished up today, and now all of the joist framing is complete!  It's pretty amazing how quickly this most visible part of our construction went.  Our next task will be working on the railing posts (which must be placed before the decking), and also starting on work for the stairway/landing area.

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