All done except lower stairs and some dribs and drabs

So I put in a few more good days wrapping up a lot of little stuff that I hope makes this job really good: I had milled about 50 pickets from shorter lengths of redwood, both from this deck and from the Big House.  As usual I just could not believe the number of little things that have to get done before the job is truly over--cleaning up scraps, moving tools, remembering do-list items from weeks before (e.g., a tiny bit of deckboard to fit underneath one of the bench supports--how many times had I looked at it as I went up the path?), and even still, there's another day or so to take care of.

I'd left my camera at home, and had taken pictures with Tom's camera instead, but it turns out it takes a different cable (love those proprietary pinouts!) so I don't have any of the work-in-progress shots right now--maybe I will add them when I borrow the cable.  Not that I took many pictures of myself filling in the screw schedule as it got cooler and cooler yesterday evening--probably put in 350, including some re-do's on some boards that needed shims or re-seating.

But here's a shot from this morning, that gives a sense of what the project looks like from the driveway.  The angles look good, and as I had hoped, the roof angle and the rail supports complement each other.

It took a while to get up to speed on the process of installing the pickets, and I realize I probably should not have installed the deck slats before doing the pickets on the left side--talk about awkwardly cramped!  The tricky part, obviously, is the spacing, but with a carefully marked stick, some spacers, and a couple of trigger clamps, once I got going it went pretty fast. I have to buy some more ammo for the diagonal finish nailer, as a deck screw isn't enough to keep the pickets firm against the two rails.  You can't see it, but I ran the roundover router on the verticals, which is a nice look.

And here's the way the verticals and the other angles work together at the top of the stairs...

And here's the detail of the newel post, the iPhone focus isn't ideal.  Muggs chamfered the tops of the posts at a 60 degree angle, and I sanded them a bit.  I'm a little worried about how the exposed end grain is going to behave in the hot sun that this deck gets--if it starts to crack too much, maybe a copper cap could protect them.  I angled the end cuts on the deck slats, which keeps the theme going.

So: the deck itself is ready to use, the tools are downstairs or in Knaack boxes, and with a few pickets, the electrical hook-up for the porch light, and a few Simpson brackets and we are DONE!