Building a Raft: Part Three
It is a sad truth that when you have a full time job they actually expect you to show up at the office on Monday morning and work a full day. So we didn't get any work done until I got home. Fortunately, we'd gotten well set up to just get to work and make things happen last night.
For the most part it was a matter of screwing or nailing on the fasteners that hold the deck together. Last night Noel cut out all the blocks to fit between the joists, so with those in place it was easy to just lay things out and fasten them down, without too much thinking or measuring.
The tricky bit that we did tonight was the mitered corner where the stairs will come down into the garden. We had to miter the pieces of the deck already in place, for example.
The doubled edge of the deck was a bit challenging, but it worked OK.
Then we squared everything up so we could measure the actual distance at the corner. The sun was just getting low enough that we could use the laser level again.
Some parts of the deck are a bit woobly and uneven, but they will be mostly hidden by the deck surface.
With the mitered stair header in place, we put in the last two pieces of framing that meet up with it. The whole thing was getting nice and firm.
By the time Noel was nailing the last piece in place, the sun was down and we had turned on the back light.
(The blocking is just sitting on the beams there to help hold the joists in place.)
It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so we decided to lay the wood we have not yet used on the raft. And, OK, in no small part we wanted to be able to walk on the deck before buying the decking.
That shadow is Noel.
The dogs were not nearly as excited to try it out as we were. Goldie absolutely refused to stay on there. Rosie was a little better only because she has the serious dog-modeling chops.
It really turned a little crazy there. Also Rosie had a little tumble off the deck. We finally gave up and let the dogs run around to the side door where they're used to going in the house.
We, on the other hand, did something we haven't done in about seven years.
posted by ayse on 04/09/12