Building a deck.

[FiveLeeter]

Anyone ever built their own deck, OMG it's tedious...

Been working on it in my spare time for about 3 weeks now (an hour or two a day and then 6-8 hours on Saturday). Been mostly just me with a little help from the wife, but finally got some help to come over (bribed with food) and make some progress today.

Original deck on the house was 16x8. New deck will be a 24x24 square, then recessed stairs that go down to a lower deck. Expanding on the lower deck you can see, which then ends up circumferencing a 24' diameter above ground pool (being installed next weekend).

Been a long process, but will be worth it in the end. Hoping to have the joists finished on the upper this week, and then install the uprights for the railing (had a blonde moment and forgot that when installing the piers originally).

Some progress pics:

Before you ask, that's NOT decking, just scrap boards laid out to step across.

 

[kylecm85]

I have done a few an without help it is a hard job to do. We built ours in about 3 days. But it was a basic 14x14.

 

[Wes06]

parents re-did our deck years ago, that old one was literally falling apart.
did take a while but looks so much better now.

also i did a similar thing with scrap wood on a unfinished part, parents had friends over and drinking, one decided to go dance on it, fell off and nearly busted his skull open on a hunk of concrete....
tl:dr, dont drink on a unfinished deck

 

[FiveLeeter]

also i did a similar thing with scrap wood on a unfinished part, parents had friends over and drinking, one decided to go dance on it, fell off and nearly busted his skull open on a hunk of concrete....
tl:dr, dont drink on a unfinished deck

I hear ya on that. I was going to run to the store and get some plywood to lay over and my father in law was like "no let's do this."

5 minutes later he fell through. stepped in the middle of a joist and the board flew up. Luckily it's only 8" off the ground there...

 

[Wes06]

I hear ya on that. I was going to run to the store and get some plywood to lay over and my father in law was like "no let's do this."

5 minutes later he fell through. stepped in the middle of a joist and the board flew up. Luckily it's only 8" off the ground there...

ours was more then 8" but we had the concrete hunks from the previous deck laying under there, good thing he missed it cause that wouldnt have been pretty.

So did you go buy some plywood after that?

 

[FiveLeeter]

sure did. he thought it would be a wasted expense was the reason to not, but my plan is once the frame is done, I'll repurpose it to create a crawl space to put the pool toys.