Deck Replacement (Part 2)

This post leaves off where <<Part 1>> ended.

First up, I marked the locations of all the joists that would be run out from the house. These were placed no more than 16" on center, and occasionally less where obstacles got in the way. There were several utilities on the side of the house that I had to work around. Once all of the spots were marked, I attached the header brackets, and started putting up the joists.

Once the joists were all up, I put the face board on.

After that, it was time to put the rail support posts up. These attach to the face boards, and to the end joists. I knew the rails that I was going to use were sold in in 6' lengths, so that was the absolute max distance I could allow between support posts. I measured everything out, and spaced it all evenly with that max distance under consideration. I also had to map out where the stairs would go. I knew I'd need two sets of stairs, roughly one for each end of the deck.

You'll note that the post in the center is much higher than the rest, and has a light on top of it. This was done because there are few outside lights in the backyard, and no plug-ins. I added the plug sockets, the switch, and the light. The power was already run out to the deck, because the original deck had the same plug/swith/light set up that I went with.

Next I put up both sets of stairs. This required me to cut stair stringers, dig 4 additional post holes, and put the stair treads on. I wasn't happy at all about this, as I was super sick of digging post holes at this point.

Next I screwed the deck boards down.

Then it was time to put up the rails. This part was pretty easy. You just cut each rail to the right length, making sure that the spindle openings are equidistant from each end. Then you attach the spindles to the rails. There are brackets that hold the rails to the support posts. Just make sure everything is level, and it's a breeze. The only tedious part here was cutting down every single spindle by 3", and adding the bevel cut to the end. Each spindle also had to be pre-drilled, before screwing it to the rail. That was to keep the spindles from splitting.

The trickiest part of all this was doing the rails for the stairs. I checked and double-checked each angle, and didn't make any mistakes. I added hand grip boards to the top of the rails for the stairs. These were sanded with a belt sander to make them super smooth, and to ensure that no splinters were left.

The tops of the support posts that are at the bottoms of the stairs were also hit with the belt sander, to make them look more like the tops of the rail posts.

I left a small section against the house undecked, where the hose hydrant was. I later added a little trap door that can be pulled out by hand. This was so it would be easier to access the hydrant. I didn't want to be crawling under the deck every time I needed to attach a hose. You can see the hose snaking out of the hand hold in the next few pics.

Including everything this deck cost me a touch under $1,660 to build. It's final size is 30'x12'. It took about three months of work, with absolutely no help.

The end result is really great, as you can see. It's a world of improvement over the original.