Bench bottom, and some remedial work

Today rain was in the forecast so last night after I buttoned up tools and made the jobsite shipshape I decided to seize the moment to address a nagging problem I had left untreated: some of the boards on the old deck were incredibly beefy, 1 5/8" or even thicker, and when I was milling them I stupidly just took off enough wood to make them look nice--but they were still thicker than most of the other boards.  In a deck like this one some irregularity is part of the charm, but "feet don't lie," and there were perceptible bumps or transitions where some of these thick boards met thinner ones.

So, off I went: since I had not fully screwed down the boards (I had about half the screws in--enough to hold everything together, but not full schedule), it was scarily fast to undo my hard work of a couple of weeks back, and leave gaps in the deck.  I left myself breadcrumbs in the form of notes on the ends of boards to help me quickly put them back in the right places, and as the clouds looked rainy I ran them through the planer a few times to bring them down to a little over 1 7/16" thick.  Then I ran the roundover bit on the edges to soften them, and when I emerged from downstairs, the sun was out.

This shows the boards back in place--the planing makes them slightly pinker than the boards that have been in the sun longer, although this late evening shot doesn't really capture it.

This was the big progress today after Tom arrived with a bit more lumber: I got the bench bottoms cut and attached, not 100% trivial given the angles involved.  This shot shows the newly milled wood more clearly than the previous one, I guess.  Hard to charge for my mistake, so I'll eat a few hours on that gaffe.

These miters aren't totally straightforward because of the angle of the bench itself: using the compound miter saw I cut the 45's on a slight angle from the vertical so the top edges meet more closely.  I ended up using different widths of boards (5 1/2, 4 1/2, 3 1/2 and 2 3/4), which is a nice look and which worked well with what we had around.

Now it's just slats and then I can start the true homestretch--milling the lumber for the stair treads and the stair pickets / balusters.  All the lumber is downstairs, so rain on!