Bench support and corner details

The bench supports went in pretty fast of course, but the corner is yet another three-dimensional geometry problem.  Having done it a few times before I was able to take some dimensions, but there were subtle differences between what was required at the Big House and what would work here.

Here I have mocked in the new corner and am test fitting it for height and for angles: again the back has to be a 22.5 degrees, and the support board has to be deeper than that of the other bench supports (the square root of 2 times that length, give or take a Pythagorean).  Who says that high school math never gets used?

I've laid boards on from either side to make sure that they match well enough--this will save nightmarish shims and cuts in the last couple of days of putting in bench boards themselves and rail slats--they have to meet neatly or the eye will go straight to them.

Here's the completed unit, with top cap sitting on its miter support.  The other step was to cut a slight bevel in the front edge of the top cap, so that the feel on a sitter's shoulders isn't jarringly irregular.

And here is what I came up with for the corner to the right of the top of the stairs; instead of the 22.5 that I thought I would need, I realized that would mean ridiculous kluges to fit the slats to connect to the vertical post.  So instead, I decided to keep the rail support in the same plane as the bench supports along the rose bush side, and again opted to hang the outside support along the edge of the rim--this means that the slats will match more neatly as they join to the vertical post.

I softened the corner slightly, both for aesthetic reasons and out of necessity: the dimensions of the deck itself were just a little too long to have full miters with 16' lengths of cap, and going up to 20' would have been that much more expensive.  As it stands, the only breaks in the rail are at the corners, which is kind of cool.

This shows the other corner, along with the fascia board.  Besides slats and benches, we still have to drill holes for the lower tails of the supports, sandwiching a block of wood to attach below the joist for added stability and longevity. The punchlist continues but we are CLOSE!