The Great "Out Deck"

[ustmd]

Since there have been so many deck questions lately, I thought I would post some pictures of the deck I am building for my neighbors/in laws (the in laws live next door).

The back yard to their house has never been very accessible from the house and consequently has been neglected. There was a significant step out out of the kitchen door (~2 ft) and from the master bedroom (~3 ft). Neither the builder nor the previous 2 owners ever thought to do something about it.

So when the in laws put in an above ground pool in September, we thought it was a perfect time to put in a deck to make the area more usable.

My mother in law had the pool company put in a small deck when they set up the pool. The pool company charged her $3k for the 150 sq ft deck . Don't get me started on this deck.

The deck we are building is ~800 sq ft and is on two levels-to accommodate the slope of the land and to meet the level for the 150 sq deck. I have 4 x 4 pt posts set on 18" footers. The beams are doubled 2x8 pt and the joists are all 2x8 pt, 16" OC. The decking will be 5/4 cedar.

Unfortunately, since we just dropped below 100 for the highs this week, progress has been slow. I will keep the pictures coming as we make progress.

 

[ustmd]

A couple more pictures.

That is my mother in law with the supervisor-Tig

 

[BeezFun]

Let us know when you have the pool party, we'll bring our suits. Looks great.

 

[ustmd]

Let us know when you have the pool party, we'll bring our suits. Looks great.

Well, if you all bring your tools and help finish, you are more than welcome to come on over.

Spent today doing some more structural work on the deck--blocking by the pool.

We got about 6 courses of the decking laid.

 

[tmajor]

I'm reluctant to say anything .. "if you don't have anything good to say, ..."

I don't like the joists to be over their bearing support by so far (as in the first picture above). In other words lapped so far. When weight is put on the unsupported portion of the joists, in the center, the end beyond the support, will tend to try to go up.

P.S. Other than that, it looks good!

 

[ustmd]

The heat finally broke and we got all of the decking down. We lost 1.5 days to this strange event. Water fell from the sky. Do any of you have any familiarity with that phenomena? :laughing:

Now we only need to decide on what to do on the area where my father in law will have his grill and then the railings.

 

[ustmd]

The supervisors also had a new spot.

 

[crbr]

Looks good....

 

[MotorSeven]

That's a bigun.. isn't it fun building one around a nice curvy pool?

 

[ustmd]

That's a bigun.. isn't it fun building one around a nice curvy pool?

Yeah--I definitely noticed how big it was with the last 200 sq ft of decking--knees are all scraped up.

I should also mention, this is my first deck, so the curve of the pool just added a level of "interest" to my first time out of the gate on a deck.

I can definitely say that the Bo wrench was worth every dime of the $53 I paid for it.