{"id":3,"date":"2007-05-23T10:42:06","date_gmt":"2007-05-22T21:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mattkemple.com\/blog\/?p=3"},"modified":"2007-05-23T10:42:06","modified_gmt":"2007-05-22T21:42:06","slug":"building-a-deck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/2007\/05\/building-a-deck\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Deck"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I built a deck for my girlfriend Dawn’s dad, Gordy. I have never taken on a project quite like this by myself before.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Original
Here's the original deck and steps.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Long story short, there was a small deck already in place that was starting to become rickety and fall apart, so a new one would need to be built, and why make it the same size? Bigger is always better. Last fall, they thought way ahead and added a sliding glass door off the living room. \u00a0Due to an accident, a\u00a0handicap\u00a0ramp needed to be\u00a0installed\u00a0quite suddenly\u00a0, so the insurance company assembled one about 16 feet long off the existing decking. \u00a0In order to use the new door, two small steps were built to connect to the ramp\u00a0temporarily.<\/p>\n

I took the old deck apart piece by piece, which was no easy task! The original deck was put together with framing nails, so I pretty much only used a hammer and circular saw to take it all apart. I made some temporary steps using the old deck steps and screwed it all together to make sure it didn’t move around and was safe.<\/p>\n

\"Taking
Taking the old deck apart.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a few days, I removed the temporary steps and remaining structure to measure everything out and figure out were the post holes would be dug. \u00a0The old deck was built over conduit feeding electrical going to the garage, so I had to take very careful\u00a0measurements to make sure problems didn’t come up later.<\/p>\n

\"Taking
Temporary steps in place, time to call it a day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We hired a company to dig the holes and pour the concrete, which was a good idea because the soil had a huge amount of rocks where the holes needed to go, and would have taken literally weeks to dig by hand. \u00a0It took a Cat two full days to dig the eight holes. \u00a0Deck holes in Wisconsin must be dug below the frost line, which is 4 feet deep! Any shallower and the deck could shift off the house\u00a0from freezing and thawing over time. This obviously could make things very unsafe.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Look at that!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The day after the holes were\u00a0finished, the inspector came by in the morning and approved the holes and the concrete was poured. Metal brackets were inserted into the concrete before it dried so the posts could be mounted and secured with bolts. \u00a0The hard part is getting the posts set perfectly to one another to ensure the deck is level and square. It can cause major problems with the construction of the deck if the joists are not built\u00a0correctly from the start.<\/p>\n

\"Deck
The start of building!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We attached the main beams on either side of the posts, and added additional supports when two beams needed to be joined together. \u00a0The decks\u00a0dimensions\u00a0are 8′ x 20′, much nicer than the five foot square of the old! Posts needed to be\u00a0measured\u00a0and cut to the proper\u00a0height\u00a0for the deck pieces on the top layer, and metal framing brackets needed to be installed to hold everything in place. This part took much longer than I thought, but still only two days for this part.<\/p>\n

\"Deck
All in place, ready for the actual decking.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After all the joists are in place, additional support is added to the ends of the joists. \u00a0The\u00a0beginning\u00a0of this can be seen in the photo to the right. After this, the deck part can go down! \u00a0This was by far the most time consuming part. \u00a0I built the framing and joists out of treated wood beams. \u00a0The deck part used was Trex, which I think is recycled plastic, but it looks just like wood and should last much longer. \u00a0In the end it looked really nice but was very hard to work with. Cutting and drilling was a bit harder than traditional pine, and every hole had to be pre-drilled so the material would not crack or split! \u00a0In the end, the deck turned out great, but took a very long time. \u00a0It’s always good to be familiar with the materials you are using, and never be afraid to ask questions!<\/p>\n

\"Deck
The top is there, just need a railing!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I built a deck for my girlfriend Dawn’s dad, Gordy. I have never taken on a project quite like this by myself before. Long story short, there was a small deck already in place that was starting to become rickety and fall apart, so a new one would need to be built, and why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,27],"tags":[35,39,41,62,67],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-construction-projects","category-work-experience","tag-building","tag-construction","tag-deck","tag-projects","tag-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattkemple.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}