No Rain!

The weather guessers were wrong.  What was predicted to be a washout today was actually 5 minutes of sprinkles around 4 PM.  The result was five more sections of railing put up.

Two more sections on the end will cap off the main portion of the deck.  We had to knock off early because of a sporting event my son was involved with.
After those two sections, it's stairs and white Azek fascia trim.

Working the Railings

The weather has not been great as of late.  I took the sunrise picture on Sunday morning.  Red sky in morning, sailors take warning goes the saying.  Or maybe it should be deck builders take warning.

We've had several days and evenings of rain unfortunately. Wednesday night I was able to attach one section. Getting all the tools out on the deck is half the battle so I decided to take over the area inside the door to the kitchen and stage tools there for the next couple of days.
Completing the second rail section last night section was somewhat difficult. There was nothing different from the first section that I put in, but mentally my head was not into it. I cut a support piece short which I was able to correct, but the rest of the night was measure six times, cut once. . .

Tonight was smooth sailing and the third railing section was installed in about an hour. Once we installed the third section, the skies were threatening and I had to break down. It started raining almost immediately after we got things in. 
I have tomorrow off. Hopefully the weather will cooperate enough to get work done. Three sections done, nine to go.

Some tips if you are installing TimberTech's Radiance Rail:

- My lumberyard recommended using rough cedar for posts because they have seen pressure treated material crack the post covers.

- Start with a rail section that will give you a good size piece of leftover piece of top and bottom rail.  Use the scrap rails to test fit the rail to post joint.  This will allow you to determine the angles to cut the rails, leaving a tight joint between the rail and the post.  Generally I had to cut the rail either a half or whole degree one way or another.

- As you get more scrap pieces of railing, mark the scraps with the angle they are cut at.  This will allow you to quickly figure out what angle you need to cut the rails at.

- Cut your rails slightly long, check, then trim an 1/8" off the rail.  Repeat this process until you have reached the correct length.  The top and bottom rails should be very tight to the posts to have a tight joint.

- Work hard to ensure your posts are plumb.  If your top and bottom rail are different lengths, your posts are not plumb.

Hopefully I'll have lots of pictures tomorrow.

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!

Great Customer Service. . .

I woke up at 3 am today.  This is early, even for me.  I've been having some tendonitis in my left arm lately, and I forgot to take some Advil before I went to bed.  I must have laid on my arm because it was sore and woke me up.   

The workday started with a visit from the warranty representative of our builders to start the drywall repair.  He came and went throughout the day applying a coat of mud and sanding it when it was dry.  He has to come back next week to finish the mud job and apply paint.
Dad came by around nine o'clock.  He started driving some screws on the deck when I wasn't looking.
We started on the bump-out and worked our way out.  After attaching several planks, we found that we were one 20' plank short.  Ugh.  The one remaining 20 footer was pretty scratched up, so I figured that I would exchange it.  I looked at putting it in or on top of the mini-van, but the board was longer than the van and too flexible to go on the roof.  I called the lumberyard A. D. Moyer where I purchased the material to see if it would be possible to get a late day delivery and exchange. Frankly I didn't think that it was going to happen.  At four o'clock the truck rolled up and dropped off the material - at no charge.  Awesome customer focus!

While we waited for the material to finish up the bump-out, we moved to the house side and wrapped up the inside 2 foot section.  There was some cutting and tweaking involved, so we took our time here.  Once we got this section done, we started trimming the board edges with the circular saw.  Fortunately I noticed that one CONCEALoc fastener was hanging slightly over the edge of the joist before I started cutting. This would have wrecked the circular saw blade I had just purchased to cut the deck edges. I had to attack this with a jig-saw and a metal cutting bit.  Actually 2 metal cutting bits, the fasteners are pretty tough stuff.

Mid afternoon we had a rainstorm which had us clear everything off the deck.  The rain lasted 10 minutes, then the sun came out again.  We were able to get back to work shortly after it stopped.
Tomorrow we will attach the last three planks, trim the edges, and start with the Radiance Rail sections.  There are 12 sections of railing that will need to go up.

Four Day Recap

This past Sunday was a beautiful day, low 80s, low humidity.  We went to church in the morning.  In the afternoon, I took a nap.  A nice long nap.  I didn't do anything on the deck except sit on it.  It was a great day of rest.

Monday evening, my son and I worked on the deck attaching more deck planks.

Tuesday night, it rained cats and dogs.

Tonight, my son and I attached another two posts and built the deck out to the edge of the posts in the main section of the deck.  We have one more board to connect on the outside of the posts tomorrow night.

We have two more sections to complete:   

   The two foot deep section by the house.
   and the 4' deep section in the bumpout.  This area starts at 20' wide and narrows to 12' wide. There will be no butt joints in either of these two sections so the work should go quicker than the main portion of the deck.
I've got Friday off, so what we don't get done tomorrow night, we'll complete on Friday.  After that we'll trim the edges of the planks to be flush with the joist edges and then move on to the Radiance Rails.

Walk the plank(s). . .

It was a good day today in between and after the rainstorms.  I got started around 8 am with attaching more planks.  This continued throughout the day.  Twice we had to quickly throw all the tools into the riding mower's trailer and pull them into the garage when heavy rain rolled in. Fortunately as quick as the rain came in, it blew out.  Both times I mopped the excess water off the deck, the sun dried things out, and we were back to work within an hour of pulling things off the deck.

As is becoming a good Saturday tradition, my Dad came over to supervise, this time with my Mom as well.  The day pretty much consisted of attaching the planks to the deck.  Work around the steps slowed things a bit, but by the end of the day the main part of the deck is about two thirds complete.  We knocked off at 5 pm for a steak dinner.

We couldn't resist putting a couple of patio chairs up on the deck to try it out.  
I'd like to get the remaining planks installed by next Thursday so that next weekend we can focus on getting the railings attached.

As expected, I woke up before 5 am this morning.  After having my cup of coffee and sorting through some emails, I got to work on figuring out step details.  On my last deck project in NY, the steps took way longer than they should have.  Using Google's free Sketch-Up CAD software, I was able to draw up the details I needed in about a half hour.  It's a pretty amazing tool.

We had a scheduled visit from the plumbing company to fix a problem with the master bath tub.  When the master toilet was flushed, it would suck the water out of the tub's drain line and allow septic gases into the house.  It turns out that it was plumbed wrong and didn't vent the tub properly.  Unfortunately, they had to cut several holes in our kitchen ceiling to fix the problem.  The builder's handyman will be coming next week to do the drywall.  This is going to be a tough drywall job as it is in the kitchen ceiling and will be easily seen if not done well.
The plumber left around noon.  After lunch my son and I started with installing the two posts around the steps and then installed some additional wood blocking to support the steps.

We then started attaching the planks.  I came up with a way to pull the boards together by using an 18" piece of 1/2" pipe, a Bessey Pipe clamp from Lowes, and two metal trusses screwed to a 2x4.  This setup worked so well that we went out and got a second pipe clamp from Lowes.  Precut and threaded 1/2" pipe - $3, 2 Trusses - $4, Clamp - $12.  About $40 for the two clamps.  The CONCEALoc fasteners are working well now that we have a method to seat the planks onto them.We got several courses of planks attached before we broke for dinner with wife's sister and family.  I continued on after dinner.

Tomorrow we will be laying planks all day long.