Monday, June 8, 2009

Moving Right Along

Our deck has been finished for two weeks. This weekend, I got all my planters planted, and got some new cushions for my old patio furniture (which we're keeping for a while anyway, even though we got new fancy stuff last week). But! I had good intentions of pseudo live-blogging our deck building, so you'll have to wait for a little while longer for finished pictures.

Hank was very disturbed when the old deck was taken away:


You guys? Seriously. This is dumb. I am not amused.


This is what the foundations of a deck look like. It's a little hard to see, but there are a bunch of concrete footings in there, then landscaping paper and tons of gravel, to minimize under-deck weed growth. The precision with which they laid out that gravel was sort of impressive.


And here's the framing. Pretty cool, right? I really enjoyed watching this get laid out.

Here we have the decking laid out, and the posts for the rails. We sprang for Trex decking - from the Brasilia line, if you are curious - then the white stuff is just heavy-duty PVC. Trex is a PVC & wood composite material that is virtually maintenance-free. You just have to keep it clean. No staining, ever. Love it. We did treated pine for the railings (though the posts are cedar). The vertical surfaces don't get the same wear and tear from the weather as the horizontal surfaces, so you don't have to retreat them as frequently. Plus, painting some railings every two years or so isn't as daunting as the whole deck.

Coming soon: the finished deck!

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