I may have alluded to some computer problems in an earlier post--well, they came back to bite me over the weekend, and I lost some photos that I was going to upload to the blog. Nothing irreplaceable, and once I finished gnashing my teeth I realized what a First World Problem such matters truly are.
So I got up here Tuesday after having left on Sunday morning--I tarped the deck to avoid having the boards warp in the hot sun (I had run out of deck screws and the local builders' supply was closed for remodeling--and the heat was pretty tough to deal with. Hence the umbrella, which made it livable! I made good progress securing boards that I had pieced and placed, and here I am securing the rim joist, after cutting off all the joist tails. Clamps allow me to make small adjustments to the height so the two perpendicular elements meet evenly all along the way--saving a lot of work on decking.
This was the view this morning--I've brought the remaining milled stock back over from the basement [I'll rebuild my little photo essay on the milling steps, how old deck boards get reclaimed, in another post], roughly arranged by length, and I've put Vycor tape on the bare joists the previous evening in the coolness--otherwise it's almost impossible to work with.
Then comes the process of test-fitting the boards before marking them and cutting them; it's where the creativity and ingenuity come into the process, and I sometimes get a real kick out of it when it's going well. I realize it's a lot like quilting, the whole process, as one is constantly having to think spatially and determine how individual pieces fit into the bigger pattern. Making sure the seams don't coincide too closely is one criterion, and another is minimizing the amount of good wood that gets cut off. That tail extending from the pile is situated that way to remind me that there are a couple of blemishes in the middle, that I have to cut off and use the smaller bit for a stair tread or something. I know most professionals just use new wood or (gasp) manufactured wood products like Trex, which have the advantage of being perfectly regular, but honestly I can't abide that stuff...
Here's the view in the evening: I didn't do a ton more screwdriving past where I was in the morning, but I wanted to fit as much as I could so as to be able to tell Muggs how much to buy. Turns out there's only a couple more 16' 2 x 6's to buy for the deck boards--the rest is salvaged! The boards on the far left have some pretty significant knots so they'll be hidden under the bench we're going to put in. I'll piece together some very thin boards (that had to get passed through the planer a few extra times) to fit the gap next to the house, and I still have the stair treads and the boards for the little deck-let next to the shower to mill down and install, but that will go fast.
Muggs has had a bunch of other clients to take care of while I have been squirreling away on milling and piecing, but he will try to get up here tomorrow to finish stair posts and set up for building the bench supports and rail supports. I will contribute a bunch of small pieces to those assemblies, and I have to set up for installation of those supports once they're fabricated by Muggs. I'll have to look at the original estimate but I think we will come out significantly ahead swapping my labor for not buying redwood deck boards--even though we'll be shelling out some significant dollars for rails, bench supports, and bench tops.
If it rains, I have lots of stuff I can still do, and if it doesn't, I'll keep plugging away, including the very satisfying task of setting a guide edge along the rough ends (foreground of this picture) and running the circular saw right along to get them all at once.
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