Time to post again because I am being pestered by a certain someone... *ahem*
Actually I've been meaning to post anyway so HERE goes.
I've been working on a deck that is in the backyard of my mothers house. The deck is about 5 feet tall and 8 feet wide. It has about 16 support beams along the length of it and two main support posts on the bottom. The posts were the BIGGEST pain in the ass EVER. We (my brother and I) had to dig holes that were 3ft by 3ft by 1 ft (deep). That is a LOT of dirt. And we had to move the holes a couple times to get them perpendicular to the eachother while remaining parallel to the house.
We met some obstacles while digging the holes. We punctured a hole on the water main, and now the backyard floods. We also ran into some roots from an OLD tree we cut down. The pickax BROKE while we were trying to cut through the roots, so we tried a jigsaw. The jigsaw blade broke also!! It almost flew into my face, that would have hurt. So we had to move the holes YET again. Once the holes were dug we made concrete moulds (constructed out of wood). They were basically square so when we pourted the concrete into the holes it would have a square shape (duh). Well, after that was creating the support structure of the deck.
The support structure consists of the two main posts and 16 lateral posts that I mentioned earlier. These actually weren't that bad to put up. The biggest pain of the whole thing was putting the main posts up. Why? Because my mom bought the wrong nails and they would BEND whenever we tried to nail them into a post. So I spent about half of my time yanking bent nails out and the other half of the time trying to "gently" hammer the nails in. She finally became fed up and bought SHORTER sTRONGER nails that didn't bend. After that, building the support structure was a breeze. We just had to constantly do measurements to make sure that the beams were parallel to eachother and perpendicular to the house. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the HUGE 150 pound post that supports the 16 lateral posts, that thing was SO heavy. I think I have a hernia :( (not really, but that's what it felt like when i picked it up).
Then came more lifting work. My mom rented a pick-up truck and bought about a ton of wood. She bought 8 75 pound corner posts. They don't only go in the corners, city code says they have to be at most 4 feet apart from eachother. Anyway, during the lifting I dropped one of those on my hand and now the finger nail on my left hand is purple :( Then my moms boyfriend came over and helped. He's actually a pretty cool guy, but I still wanted to kick him in the balls.
Now, TODAY: My mom and I put the corner posts on the deck, standing up. The deck will be pretty tall... probably about 8 feet tall. It looks pretty cool and it's really coming together nicely. Another thing we did today was water proof the whole deck. All you do is paint on this really watery glue like stuff. MAN does that stuff get everywhere, I still have snake hands from it (you know, when you can peel gluey stuff off of your hands like skin). It was hard though. The holders my mom bought for the corner posts weren't big enough. Well, actually they are MADE for those post holes, but they aren't exactly square so it's really hard to fit them in... we had to redrill a couple of holes and I did a ton of ratcheting. Ratcheting is fun.
Um... that's about it. Maybe when I go to my dad's and pick up my digital camera I'll take pictures of it and post them! Savvy?
Actually I've been meaning to post anyway so HERE goes.
I've been working on a deck that is in the backyard of my mothers house. The deck is about 5 feet tall and 8 feet wide. It has about 16 support beams along the length of it and two main support posts on the bottom. The posts were the BIGGEST pain in the ass EVER. We (my brother and I) had to dig holes that were 3ft by 3ft by 1 ft (deep). That is a LOT of dirt. And we had to move the holes a couple times to get them perpendicular to the eachother while remaining parallel to the house.
We met some obstacles while digging the holes. We punctured a hole on the water main, and now the backyard floods. We also ran into some roots from an OLD tree we cut down. The pickax BROKE while we were trying to cut through the roots, so we tried a jigsaw. The jigsaw blade broke also!! It almost flew into my face, that would have hurt. So we had to move the holes YET again. Once the holes were dug we made concrete moulds (constructed out of wood). They were basically square so when we pourted the concrete into the holes it would have a square shape (duh). Well, after that was creating the support structure of the deck.
The support structure consists of the two main posts and 16 lateral posts that I mentioned earlier. These actually weren't that bad to put up. The biggest pain of the whole thing was putting the main posts up. Why? Because my mom bought the wrong nails and they would BEND whenever we tried to nail them into a post. So I spent about half of my time yanking bent nails out and the other half of the time trying to "gently" hammer the nails in. She finally became fed up and bought SHORTER sTRONGER nails that didn't bend. After that, building the support structure was a breeze. We just had to constantly do measurements to make sure that the beams were parallel to eachother and perpendicular to the house. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the HUGE 150 pound post that supports the 16 lateral posts, that thing was SO heavy. I think I have a hernia :( (not really, but that's what it felt like when i picked it up).
Then came more lifting work. My mom rented a pick-up truck and bought about a ton of wood. She bought 8 75 pound corner posts. They don't only go in the corners, city code says they have to be at most 4 feet apart from eachother. Anyway, during the lifting I dropped one of those on my hand and now the finger nail on my left hand is purple :( Then my moms boyfriend came over and helped. He's actually a pretty cool guy, but I still wanted to kick him in the balls.
Now, TODAY: My mom and I put the corner posts on the deck, standing up. The deck will be pretty tall... probably about 8 feet tall. It looks pretty cool and it's really coming together nicely. Another thing we did today was water proof the whole deck. All you do is paint on this really watery glue like stuff. MAN does that stuff get everywhere, I still have snake hands from it (you know, when you can peel gluey stuff off of your hands like skin). It was hard though. The holders my mom bought for the corner posts weren't big enough. Well, actually they are MADE for those post holes, but they aren't exactly square so it's really hard to fit them in... we had to redrill a couple of holes and I did a ton of ratcheting. Ratcheting is fun.
Um... that's about it. Maybe when I go to my dad's and pick up my digital camera I'll take pictures of it and post them! Savvy?
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