Blog series by Karson consisting of 8 parts so far |
Part 1: The Start
Well I was working on building the deck and I kept saying. Take some pictures. But, it didn’t get done. These pictures are from before putting on the deck surface. The deck is placed just outside a small deck that goes between the screened porch and the Solarium. We have a spa in the Solarium room. The deck is basically 16’ X 16’. It’s 14 feet to the beginning of the curved edge. One end is tapered to match the sidewalk that goes around the house. I’...
Part 2: Day 3 of the build
Well yesterday was a rain-out day, so today was a double-header. Well not really true. But the deck boards were going down well. You can see my 20 ft pipe clamp that I’m using to compress all of the deck boards and take out the woofs, and the bows that always seem to show up after your get the perfect boards home. So much for hand picking. Everything was going well until I got close to the edge. Of course I was planning to stop here until I did the electric for the ligh...
Part 3: Day 4 of the build.
Well day 4 was productive, just not on the deck. About 1 week ago I was in the office in the shop and I heard a loud hissing. I went to find out what it was. The safety unload valve was dumping air from the air compressor tank. The compressor was running and it was not shutting off. The safety valve was doing what it was suppose to do. Keep air compressor parts from flying all over the shop. Some how, some way the contacts welded shut on the shutoff switch. I moved the lever down to shu...
Part 4: Day 5 and Day 6 of the deck build.
Well Day 5 of the deck build had me starting on the Light poles. I made a wooden tube that was about 5 3/4” on each side. Three sides are glued together and the forth side will be attached with stainless trim screws, which have a smaller head. They have square drive. The posts are 8’ long and are 83” above the deck to the top of the wooden post. In the uphill side the post is about 12” in the ground. One the downhill side the post is on top of the ground, but...
Part 5: Treated Wood
Someone asked the question if I was going to treat the wood that I used on the posts. That was something that I forgot, and i was planning to write about when I made the posts and enches. When I was at the big orange home supply center I saw some new treated wood. It’s by Thompson’s, its called Thompsonized wood The wood was not the normal green treated wood. It’s more of a natural color wood treatment. This post is treated wood. The price is about the sam...
Part 6: Finishing the deck surface and fixing the electric problems
Well I finally got the electric problems taken care of and so i screwed down the last two deck boards. These boards butt up against the two light poles. And I did the finish cutting of the curve. So here are the details: I mentioned earlier, I believe in the first blog of this series that I installed a GFCI circuit breaker in the fuse panel and i was having problems where it kept tripping whenever i put a load on the circuit. Even a load as small as a Dusk to Dawn switch with nothing el...
Part 7: The first bench is done
Well is was a good day for working outside. A little cloudy, a little sunny, a few drizzles, but nothing to make it unbearable. I failed to take pictures of the straight bench being made, but, here it is. The seat is 14 1/2” wide (4 – 1X4’s) The straight bench was designed as 5’ long, but then trimmed to final fitting. So it’s a little longer as sitting here. The legs are 2X4’s 17” long with a 3” rail at top and bottom with 1 1/2”...
Part 8: Finished the second bench
Well today I got to working on the second bench. I assembled it and brought it over to the deck and trimmed up the straight bench and the curved bench so that they fit in the corner of the deck. I then went and got the trim router with a 1/4” roundover (got to make it kid friendly) and a sander to get rid of the saw marks, saw cuts and roundover where the trim router won’t reach. I did the edges on both surfaces of the benches and sanded both of them. Here are ...