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irish44j (Forum Supporter)
irish44j (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
4/29/20 9:02 p.m.

Seems I'm getting around to a lot of long-delayed household projects being at home so much these days. Usually just doing car stuff, but as luck would have it, the UPS guy hasn't been here in 2 days to deliver car parts I'm waiting for..... Anyhow, decided yesterday to build a ground-level deck under my main deck to replace the mud pit there (resulting from when I leveled the whole area a year ago with the intent of building a patio, which I never did because building patios suuucks...).

So, not that exciting really, but figured I'd post it up since it's not like I can call friends over to check it out lol...

Yesterday, at an eerily quiet Lowes where finding someone actually working was difficult (and the few guys working in the lumber area looked like they had worked for about 80 hours straight, so I felt bad asking them), so I filled three lumber carts with a bunch of 16-foot lumber and related stuff and struggled mightily to push them to the loading area. Then loaded it all myself. Photo since I happened to be wearing a GRM shirt...

The advantages of having a 16-foot deck on my trailer, and noplace to haul any race cars to in recent months.....

After telecommuting this morning, decided to bail out of "work" at lunch and get going on this since this is the last nice day for the rest of the week. 

Luckily, my least favorite part of deck-building, digging posts in red clay soil, is something I didn't have to do since my upper deck posts were in convenient spots. Mocked up and leveled everything...

(by the way, not gonna pretend this is a "professional" deck by any means - it's more like a "as good of a deck as I'm willing to build, to avoid making things too complicated). You're welcome to critique, but I am an engineer, so at very least I know it is strong and will hold up, even if maybe I cut a few corners. And it's a foot off the ground, so not too concerned.  My big deck up top was built by pros :)

I through-bolted the main beams through the posts (thankfully, I had a 10" 5/8" boring bit in my toolchest, for some unknown reason....). Since this is ground-level, I can't do stringers over the beams like a "real" deck (else it would be way above my basement door), so had to settle for strap-style hangers and long screws.

Ran crossbeams, etc

Threw down some gardening cloth to keep random stuff from growing under there, and addes some stringer spacers

To avoide taking out little kids' legs (and to match my upper deck) I angled one corner. Note the legs to the main deck are not directly across from each other, so that was another reason to do this. I did plant a 4x4 post at the corner to give support to the free-hanging edge there. 

Then started planking. Did diagonal boards to match the upper deck, which is a bit more hassle but I think looks a bit nicer once complete.

Working into the evening since it's gonna rain for 3 days, so want to get as much done as possible

So here's where it stands right now. Still have some small sections to do, add a couple steps, and some cap strips to the edges. But pretty happy with what I got done in about 8-9 hours all told. I have to say, I sit in an office all day, so hauling around 1000 lbs of lumber (especially the 16' 2x6s), most of it a bit wet, so heavier, is a lot of work. I'm gonna pay for this tomorrow.....

And here it is all finished a couple days later

 

 

Woody
Woody GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
4/29/20 9:05 p.m.

Nice!

 

nderwater
nderwater UltimaDork
4/29/20 9:06 p.m.

Excellent result!

mr2s2000elise
mr2s2000elise SuperDork
4/29/20 9:06 p.m.

Looks awesome 

 

love me some diy home projects 

irish44j (Forum Supporter)
irish44j (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
4/29/20 9:22 p.m.
mr2s2000elise said:

Looks awesome 

 

love me some diy home projects 

I only tend to do home projects when I run out of car projects, much to my wife's chagrin :)

californiamilleghia
californiamilleghia Dork
4/29/20 9:25 p.m.

impressed !

mr2s2000elise
mr2s2000elise SuperDork
4/29/20 9:30 p.m.

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

As you see on my 12 or 13 page build thread - I finally got tired. 
 

1/1/20 put hold on all car projects. First time in 17 years I went 160 days without a car purchase. My previous record is 45 days 

 

I finished all projects today, finally. 
 

tomorrow I start next car hunt. 

irish44j (Forum Supporter)
irish44j (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
4/29/20 9:45 p.m.
mr2s2000elise said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

As you see on my 12 or 13 page build thread - I finally got tired. 
 

1/1/20 put hold on all car projects. First time in 17 years I went 160 days without a car purchase. My previous record is 45 days 

 

I finished all projects today, finally. 
 

tomorrow I start next car hunt. 

I'm in the middle of one, but it's waaaay ahead of schedule so I don't mind taking a break for a few days. Especially since I really can't drive anywhere right now anyhow other than commuting to work!

mr2s2000elise
mr2s2000elise SuperDork
4/29/20 10:09 p.m.

Not being able to drive a car, never stopped me from buying one devil

 

cant see what your hunt leads to yes

Duke
Duke MegaDork
4/30/20 7:52 a.m.

I'm astounded at how quickly you got that much done.  Very nice!

 

irish44j (Forum Supporter)
irish44j (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
4/30/20 8:47 a.m.
Duke said:

I'm astounded at how quickly you got that much done.  Very nice!

 

It often annoys me that I'll push nonstop on projects like this.....skip lunch, not take breaks, just power through until I get to a stopping point for the day. That kind of stuff was fine when I was 25. But now I'm 45 and the moment I stop, I instantly realize I'm going to pay for it for the next few days lol. In this case, though, I was trying to get as much done as possible with 3 days of solid rain forecast (and yeah, it's raining hard this morning). So a bit more motivation. 

poopshovel again
poopshovel again MegaDork
4/30/20 8:51 a.m.
Duke said:

I'm astounded at how quickly you got that much done.  Very nice!

 

Had I started that project 6 months ago, it still wouldn't be finished. 
 

Very nicely done!!!!!

shagles
shagles Reader
4/30/20 8:56 a.m.

Dang! That's looking really good. Impressive amount of work to get done by yourself in 8 hours.

dculberson (Forum Supporter)
dculberson (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
4/30/20 9:14 a.m.

I like the diagonal boards, it does look good.

docwyte
docwyte UberDork
4/30/20 10:03 a.m.

Looking good!

z31maniac
z31maniac MegaDork
4/30/20 10:05 a.m.

Looks great! We've talked about doing a deck, over the patio in the backyard, but being that back door is only 4" above the concrete patio.........I'm not sure there is a good way to do so you don't end up having to step up on to the patio............or a bunch of excavation.

dxman92
dxman92 HalfDork
4/30/20 10:07 a.m.

Impressive looking to say the least! The fence around casa de DX is on life support so probably have to be replaced in the next year and change so mulling over options for that.

93EXCivic
93EXCivic MegaDork
4/30/20 10:28 a.m.
irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

I only tend to do home projects when I run out of car projects,

Dang it keeps getting the other way round for me.

irish44j (Forum Supporter)
irish44j (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
4/30/20 4:55 p.m.
z31maniac said:

Looks great! We've talked about doing a deck, over the patio in the backyard, but being that back door is only 4" above the concrete patio.........I'm not sure there is a good way to do so you don't end up having to step up on to the patio............or a bunch of excavation.

if you look closely you can see there's a notch cut out near the door because it is going to have a single step down that will meet up with the door sill. There was really no way I could get this low enough to be even with the door sill unless I dug 6 in into the ground in that entire area. 

irish44j (Forum Supporter)
irish44j (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
4/30/20 4:56 p.m.
dxman92 said:

Impressive looking to say the least! The fence around casa de DX is on life support so probably have to be replaced in the next year and change so mulling over options for that.

I did about a quarter of our fence a few years back when a tree fell and destroyed it. Really the only sucky part about building a fence is planting the posts. My fence also has a weird scalloped out curve between each post which I know the guys who built it use some kind of hose to create the curve but I kind of just eyeballed it with my sawzall lol

irish44j (Forum Supporter)
irish44j (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
5/1/20 8:10 p.m.

Finished off the deck today (other than a few finish boards I need to buy). In case anyone wants to see the finished product

dj06482
dj06482 GRM+ Memberand UltraDork
5/1/20 8:34 p.m.

Looks great!

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
5/1/20 10:08 p.m.

I've been working on a deck solo for the past four weeks or so. Gotta work during the day. It's almost done. I also went for diagonal decking as a last minute change and I'm really happy I did.

This one looks great.

ronholm
ronholm Dork
5/1/20 10:16 p.m.

I have installed thousands of joist hangers and admit I cringed a bit seeing them installed before the joists were up.   I googled before commenting and apparently that is a thing which works well enough with a jig.   I would have never thought that would have worked.

The deck looks great!

irish44j (Forum Supporter)
irish44j (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
5/1/20 11:09 p.m.
ronholm said:

I have installed thousands of joist hangers and admit I cringed a bit seeing them installed before the joists were up.   I googled before commenting and apparently that is a thing which works well enough with a jig.   I would have never thought that would have worked.

The deck looks great!

yep, with two people I would have put the joists up first and then the hangers, but it's hard to get friends over during this COVID thing lol and pretty difficult to hold a 10' joist in place while screwing it in by myself lol.........but yeah, I built a jig to hold the hangers in place while I installed them, which I also got the idea from on YouTube last week and it worked great.

I will admit to adjusting 2 or 3 of them when I hung the joists, since they didn't sit perfectly flush. Those were the first few I did with the jig before I made an adjustment to it to make it sit more flush. . 

I was surprised nobody said anything about that earlier. I was a carpenter's assistant about 25 years ago for a time and my boss would have kicked my ass if he saw me doing this haha....

 

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