This is part one of what will be 3 posts.
The second post is
The deck - The saga continues
As we continue working on the house with the goal of cleaning it up to put on the market in 2016, I am fixing up eyesore projects. One of those projects is the deck. Early on I got a couple contractor quotes for replacing it and they ran from ~$2800-4800. I wasn't real thrilled with those quotes - either too much money, too low quality components or a combination thereof. My next thought was doing it myself - I bounced that around for a long time and slowly worked myself back (with lots of input from the wife) to only replacing the guard rail and deck boards. That was the minimum I was willing to do even if we are selling the place. I just feel it is wrong to leave things like this to a new owner - going by the "do unto others as you wish them to do unto you" philosophy. I get "advice" to the contrary from some folks/family but it is part of my values that I refuse to give up. A new owner can rip it down and start over if they desire but at least no one should get hurt in the mean time.
The rail was a mess, unsafe and couldn't meet current code in any way. Here you can see the overall condition. I never really liked this deck.
Here you can see the result of me using only a little effort to break a post off. The post had been notched so only 1/4 of the 4"x4" post was supporting the horizontal rails. Current code requirements could not be remotely met by this.
The flooring was pretty bad - it is over 20 years old and hadn't been kept stained like it should have.
I tagged this project to work on near the end of everything else which turned out to be a mistake. I had dug along one of the posts a while back when I had considered doing the full rebuilt - I wanted to see if the post had concrete. I only looked enough to see there was concrete and to note that there wasn't much concrete. Now jump forward a month or 2 and when I looked at the post again (after a couple rain storms), I noticed that the post was nearly rotted in half at the concrete.
Sigh. Not what I wanted to find. The dirt on the lower right side should actually be the post.
I had hoped to have all my major projects completed by the end of the year (2015) but this one is going to be close. I am going to do it myself to save money and to still allow me to put the level of quality that I desire into it.
If possible and safe I will reuse a few pieces of the structure. I am going to use the existing deck boards to build square base forms for the concrete footings (remove and take to dump when done). I'm not sure if the joists are salvageable. I would likely need to flip them over to avoid hitting the partial nails left in them after ripping the flooring out. It looks like the floor nails used were non-galvanized spiral shank items. Most had rusted to less than half their diameter. I'll likely just buy new ones - not sure it is worth the effort to salvage. Maybe I can find another use for them - have to think on that.
I decided early on that I wanted to at least use metal balusters. I hunted around and actually found that I could get boxes of 64 from Lowes for a price of ~ $1.71/each. Wood balusters listed for around $0.97/each which was acceptable to me. There are places online with cheaper prices but I figured it was worth the slight premium to work with someone I know versus a site I don't and where quality and returns might be issues. Shipping to my local Lowes is free and my order was ready the next day.
I picked up a Senco collated screw gun (DuraSping 332AC) and a pail of 2.5" coated screws to start with. That should speed up laying the deck boards. I figure I can find a use for the screw gun for other projects down the road - especially with a new house.
I bought one roll of flexible flashing to go over the tops of the joists. I will be cutting the 9" wide material down to maybe 3" strips which should cover the tops of the 2x10 joists.
I also picked up a gallon of Copper-Green wood preservative so I can coat the ends of all cuts and such.
I have a 4-5 books on deck construction with copyright dates as new as 2011 and I found it troubling that they show some non-code compliant designs in a few cases. Lots of web sites show non-compliant items as well (like notching rail posts). Maybe that can be done under certain circumstances in some locale but not around here.
I am using some documentation from Strongtie (
pdf here) to select the hardware and remaining fasteners. A nice "Handy Man How To" article on deck rail construction (
here). Some other good/interesting reference material is this Youtube video (
here). My county doesn't have any really good documentation on deck requirements (just references the "code") but Fairfax County, VA has some nice information which I found helpful in interpreting the "code" better - look
here. It
looks like much/most of the prescriptive residential construction guide documents as produced by Fairfax county are based upon information from the American Wood Council found
here. It appears that counties modify the information to fit their needs though so be careful how you use it. I also found this
PDF via a google search (found at NADRA) that originate from "Professional Deck Builder • March/April 2007" which is about building techniques for decks that don't rot.
I still have a lot of decisions and drawing to make. I am hoping to get concrete work done before the outside temp drops to an unacceptable level. If I have to complete the rest in either the cold or the spring it likely won't be the end of the world - hopefully just not working in rain or snow. In the end, I am hoping to keep the price to around $1500.
May God bless you and your projects!
Scott
