30 June 2008

Gordon's Big Deck!

Karen finally won, so I decided to build my own deck over the top of the grass I laid less than a year ago!

Site Preparation: Luckily Ja and Cass were down visiting a couple of weeks ago, and with Ja's expert advice in hand the designs for "Gordon's Big Deck" (said in a Kiwi accent) were drawn up.

Last weekend I prepared the site for the deck.

I managed to save one of the small trees and relocate him to the front of the house.

During this site prep weekend I bought most of the materials I needed and ordered the wood. K and I had a fun trip from bunnings with 27 4.8m long pieces of decking pine bouncing around on the back of bunnings borrowed trailer. Luckily we are only 2 minutes down the road and Paramatta road is normal at 30km an hour ;)

Build Weekend: Day 1

With a slight hiccup of the main structural timber order falling through on Thursday arvo we thought it was going to be off for this weekend. A few quotes later and albeit $100's more the lads from Bankstown Timber were dropping the 190x45mm H3 treated pine at 10am sat. The main frame of the deck was going to be tricky, getting that bad boy level was what it was all about, so I enlisted the help of an 'old' deck hand, Andrew for Day 1 of the build.

The other great thing was that Andrew is a tool junky! and by that I don't mean he hangs about Darlinghurst on a Saturday night.... well he does sometimes ;). He has the drop saw, the jigsaw and the industrial looking hammer drill. So we were set.

After impressing on Andrew the importance of time management, we swiftly got the two 'pole faces' level and anchored to either side with the use of 22 M12 Dyna bolts (gal).. don't ask?!

After lunch the work flew, we even had K in measuring up timber ready for the chop and the frame took shape.





The end of Day 1 and the frame was up and solid as we could make it.

DAY 2: Decking and Lights

Karen was my deck hand on day 2 and once we started, we flew:



The deck lights are LED and only require 0.8w to run each one so I allowed for 6 around the deck and cabled up underneath before we began laying the deck planks, I think I'll get an electrician in to wire the transformer to the house though.

The end of Day 2 and we had an, almost, completed deck. Just the front edge, square on the side and oiling to go!