A Deck Miscellany
Noel started the day by sanding the remaining plugs smooth to the deck surface. This took him literally hours, in which time I did some irrigation inventory, more research on deck sealants, and did some yard cleanup.
We're starting to work down the lower stairs now, so it was time to trim the deck boards back so they lined up with the joists underneath.
The boards are going to be a bit funky here no matter what, because the stairs are not designed as nicely as the upper stairs, to take an exact board width and height; at this location that was just not possible.
Noel made the cut in several passes, cutting slightly deeper each time. He wanted to get down to right before the end of the wood, so he would not cut the Vycor membrane. This is important not just so you don't damage the membrane, but also because the membrane will really make a mess of your saw blade.
It's a little fussy, but sometimes you need to be fussy to get the results you want. The top edge here is a place we will see a lot, so the extra effort is really worth it.
The last cut he made with the MultiMaster, which gave a lot more control than the circular saw.
The trimmed boards came out pretty nicely. George, little Mr Underfoot, was in complete agreement.
We hadn't fastened the board ends down in the first round of deck fastening, so that was our next step.
I climbed up on the deck to take a picture of the plugged holes, and George and Goldie tried to follow me, leading to some confusion. How could I get up on the deck when there are no stairs? The dogs are very confused about this.
The last little task we did was putting blocking in at the bottom of the stairs. This blocking keeps the stringers from rotating when a large force is applied to the handrail that is attached to them. The quick calculation I did said we didn't really need it to meet code, but it made sense to do a little better than the bare minimum legally required of us.
posted by ayse on 05/26/12