Well, its been raining again in Minnesota. I'm beginning to think that's the definition of "summer" this year. Today was a good weather day (in between rain storms) so I decided to go for it and get a solid day of work done on the deck.
The basic structure was in place as of last Tuesday. Today it was time to begin laying down and attaching the deck boards. There are twenty six of them in all, and all of the 2"x6" boards are 20 feet long! I went with the 20 footers to minimize the need to splice differing lengths of decking.
My project fund is quickly reaching rock bottom, so instead of buying additonal sheets of plywood to stand on, we hoisted up a bunch of the twenty foot boards and used them as the working platform, while we put them in place one-by-one and fastened them down with decking screws.
That sounds simple enough, but I assure you its trickier than it sounds. The procedure is made more challenging by the fact that we needed to adjust the spacing between the deck boards to a standard 1/8" (aprox) all along their twenty foot length. That means getting the spacing right at the beginning and the end and driving screws in at those points, and then using spacers and/or a pry-bar at various points inbetween to obtain the 1/8" spacing (or as close as possible) throughout. And with boards twenty feet long, there's bound to be some warpage to correct. Let's see, two screws per joist and there are 16 joists, so 32 screws to drive home per 2"x6" deck board. Lots of drilling, prying and screwing. Then repeat, 26 times.
Well, we didn't get it all done today. I got 15 of the 26 board fastened into place. And I'm exhaused! Gonna sleep like a baby tonight.
Now, if I can just get another nice day tomorrow (Sunday), maybe I can get the decking all put down. Once I'm finished with the decking boards its on to the railings and finishing. I think I'm beginning to see a light at the end of this long, exhausting tunnel ;-)
