The Deck-Part 2

So just to clarify, we own our house but not the lot that it sits on. It's in a manufactured home community. Although we have every right to move our house out if we want to,  we have no intention of ever doing that.  It's expensive, and  hard on the house. Our walls are drywall and probably wouldn't hold up well to being rocked and rolled! Plus they have to cut it into two pieces! This deck will be a good selling point when the time comes for us to leave.

After taking all day Saturday to put the joists up we put a level all over the place to make sure everything was plumb and even before putting the deck boards on. It actually has a very slight tilt downward towards the street, which is not at all noticeable but good so the water will run off when it rains.

The next step was to screw 22 boards on top of the joists to make the surface of the deck. Luckily they came pre-cut to 12 feet so it was just a matter of making sure they were straight and screwing them on.

All during the day on Sunday we probably had 10 people stop and tell us how nice it looked! A few asked if Rich would build a deck for them and could not believe it when he told them he had never built a deck before! He also said no to building any decks for anyone else!

  

After we got all of the boards nailed on we put a trim board around the edge.

It's far from perfect but I think it looks pretty good so far!


The next step is the stairs, which is probably the toughest part of a deck and Rich has been struggling with them for a few days.

They're made and attached but they are not exactly right.

We decided to hold off on them and concentrate on the railing for now,

That's for the next post!

Until then.