DIY Deck Part 2/3

Check out How to DIY a cheap deck 1/3 if you missed it…

Slowly but surely our deck is coming along. Last summer we finished the bottom portion. To complete the bottom portion of the deck we needed deck boards for the stringers/joists and for the top deck boards. There are two options that decks are usually made out of. Either the standard 2×6 board or the smaller curved edge deck board that’s a bit thinner than a normal 2×6. When you go looking for wood on craigslist keep that in mind. Other than the 2×6’s we needed 4×4’s for our footers. We had a bunch of cut offs in the garage that we kept with this project in mind and some free from our Craiglist finds. The funniest part of our reclaimed deck is when Jesse’s uncle dropped off an old Shorewest realty wood sign. We ripped it apart and used it as one of our footers. Now that’s recycling!

We wanted to have our deck have a more rustic feel so we didn’t really care that all the deck boards were different colors. But if you really wanted to reclaim an old deck to look brand new you could buy a planer and plane each board before you use it. Voila! Brand new deck for free.

To add to our rustic feel instead of using standard 4×4 or decorative deck columns we decided to  go to our local wood guy and buy some old telephone poles. These suckers are super heavy and about 20 feet long so Jesse brought along his chainsaw to cut it in half and then muscle it into the truck.

The ground where we’re putting in our footers is basically hard gravel. Instead of using a hand post hole digger we rented a huge beefy bobcat with a post hole attachment. Also, because any chance Jesse gets to rent a bobcat he’ll take it!

Stone really enjoyed “helping” us build the deck and play with his cars on all the pieces of wood. I think there may be quite a few toys and random tools lost in some of our footers.

We finished the bottom deck portion and the two telephone posts last summer and then the first warm days this spring we decided to get the awning on our deck started. The only problem we ran into was attaching the ledger board to the side of our house. Our siding is corrugated metal. We didn’t want to have gaps in between the siding and the ledger board because it felt like it wouldn’t be as sturdy. We asked around to a bunch of store if there is a product for sale for this purpose. Well, there isn’t and the consensus is that you didn’t need anything. We didn’t feel comfortable with that so we cut pieces of wood the exact depth of the ripples in our siding and attached them to our ledger board.

We also live in snow country so we had to put some thought into the pitch of the roof. We skimped on how much of a slope to use because we didn’t want to obstruct our view from our window. We decided to add in two decorative posts in the front to help support the weight.

It’s amazing to see all of the pieces of the puzzle come together. Well, not all the pieces yet. We’re still waiting for our metal for the roof to get delivered and start priming/painting/rebuilding our Craigslist railings to use on our deck. I can’t wait to sit under the roof of the deck in a summer rainstorm!