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6/12-6/14/04 - Extended weekend (took Monday off)... I got a lot done this weekend. I had a slow start, but really got cranking later in the day Saturday. All in all, I got the surface deck done, cross bracing, steps, bench and some routing and sanding to smooth some of the edges. Ok, here's the deal with the steps... I originally planned to come off the deck straight out with a single string of stairs. I bought the longest stringers they had at Home Depot, which was 6 steps. When I held them up, they were still ~1 1/2 feet off the ground at the bottom. So, I returned the long stringers, and bought 5 shorter ones. I came out from the corner rather than straight off the side. I made it come down four steps, then to a landing, then three more steps down at an angle that faces the yard and steps leading down to the house. I'm glad I did it this way, because it's one of my favorite features of the deck. |
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| I had to add some extra cross bracing in (toward the middle of the photo) because the boards would have been springy toward the edge. | Cross bracing along the front and side. | |
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| Deck surface is done, but still need to drive the screws down (about 600 screws). Man, I had blisters after that was done. | Adele and the kids pose on the new deck. Conveniently, it rained overnight so the chalk lines disappeared. | |
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| That's me pretending to do something. | Staircase
is halfway done. I built the landing so the bottom set of steps
comes off on an angle towards the yard.
Once again, the Dek-Blocks came in handy. Since it was a last-minute decision to do the steps this way, with the landing in the middle had I been using concrete-sunk posts, I would have had to dig four more holes, fill with concrete, then wait for that to harden. This was ready to go at a moment's notice. |
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| Zach and Adele pose on the bench. The bench is 12' long, and was built based on plans from dekmate deck brackets. | It may not look too tough, but man, was that corner a pain to cut! | |
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| Completed
staircase. I Just have to fill the dirt back in, and plant some
grass.
The top set of steps are four feet wide, and the bottom set of steps are a little more than three feet wide. |
Close-up of the staircase. | |
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