Saturday Progress

The morning started out in the garage, cutting down and notching the 6x6 posts.  I set up in the garage as it was going to get hot outside and the shade would provide some needed relief.  We had nine posts to cut.  As I only have a 7 1/4" handheld circular saw, I had to cut each side of the post, then gave my son some practice with the handsaw to finish off the cut.  If I was doing this for a living, I'd have a bigger saw.  But then again, if I was doing this for a living, my family wouldn't eat because I'm too slow!!!  After the posts were cut down to length, I created two 11" by 1.5" notches to accept the 2x12s.  I used the handheld circular saw to cut many 1.5" deep cuts.  My son and eldest daughter had a good time knocking out the waste, then cleaning up the joints with a chisel.

My dad (aka The Supervisor) came over at 10:30 and did a great job teaching the kids the finer points of chisel work.  One of the good memories I have as a kid was raising and re-roofing the roof of my father's house.  I was 13-14 years old at the time and I learned a lot in working with my dad.  Consequently, it's something that I want to pass on to my kids.  It was good having Dad around and watching him mentor my kids the way that he mentored me as a kid.

By lunchtime, we were close to having all the posts done.  We wrapped up after sandwiches and chips, then started erecting the posts.  I had put the post base brackets on while the kids were working the posts with my Dad.  We then brought the posts out back and started to put them up and level them.  We set up a fan to keep the supervisor cool out back.My son and I wrapped up the day by landing the main 2x12s header onto the posts and temporarily tacking them into place with some deck screws.  We did find that the 2x12s actually ranged in height from 11" to 11.5".  That took a little bit of tweaking to get the headers even. Lastly, we tacked a couple of 2x10 joists in place to keep the headers from tipping over.
Work ended around 5 pm and we subsequently went to a great party at our neighbors house.  Good food, good people, fun times.  My neighbor capped off the evening with an awesome (and sometimes mis-aimed) fireworks display.  Only one rocket ricocheted off our house!