Deck Planks are on, trimmed, and retrimmed.

The morning started with a dilemna.  I had three boards to attach.  Unfortunately the deck was 3 boards plus an extra inch deep.  I kicked around several different options.  I decided to take off the rim joist, cut an inch of each of the joists at the edge of the deck, and reattach the rim joist.  It took about two hours.  

Some folks start attaching planks at the edge of the deck and work their way towards the house so that they will have a full width board at the edge of the deck.  Esthetically, I can't disagree with this approach.  I didn't do this as I didn't want a sliver of a plank at the house.  I also knew my deck was square and parallel.  Fortunately for me it worked out that I have full width boards at the house and at the edge of the deck.

Once we got the rimjoist attached we attached the final three planks.  Everything fit together perfectly.  After lunch, we started trimming all of the edges of the planks.  My dad asked if I wanted a straightedge to use as a guide.  Nah, I'll free hand it I responded.  About halfway through the cut I realized that I had drifted off the line. . . in the wrong direction. . . towards the center of the deck.  It looked as though at least one board was ruined. . .  Dad realized that we could sledgehammer the opposite end of the bad planks to slide the bad cuts over the opposite side.  This worked like a charm and we were back in business. I then recut the bad section.  We used a straightedge from there on.

My son couldn't wait to get the post sleeves on the posts and put all the caps on.  Each one will have to come off to get cut down to 39.5".  Still, I'm glad he did it.

By this point, we were ready to start attaching the railings.  We had accumulated quite a bit of stuff on the deck by this point, so we did some clearing.  I've been throwing all my tools in the trailer of my riding mower.  It's getting pretty full by now.  We then laid out the tools that we needed to start attaching the railings.  

The first section of railing always goes up the slowest.  Getting the right tools and understanding the right order of things slows things down, even if I have used this product before.  We were determined to get one section done before we quit for the evening.  We got this first section done after dinner and cleaned up around 7 pm.  One section down, eleven to go!