03-06-10. I should have taken a before picture. I started the morning by tearing down the worthless, dangerous, ugly, rickety old 8x10 deck on the second level. I had budgeted about 3 hours to take it down. It was so poorly constructed, it only took about 1 hour to tear it down. I've been building this deck in my head for the last 2 weeks. I've worked out solutions to do all the work by myself. The one thing I wasn't sure if I could handle alone was lifting the 5x5x18 posts into place. Each post weighs about 200 pounds. The weight alone isn't so bad, but tipping it into place with all the weight above and behind your head is tricky. I actually set one of these posts in place by myself. I picked the lightest one to try first. I had all my bracing in place and kept all my tools within arms reach. It wouldn’t have been too bad if I could have tipped it into a hole, but I was trying to balance it on top of a concrete pier and line it up with the bracket embedded in the concrete. I barely managed to hold it in place while I secured the bracing. I actually almost let it fall over. Kate saw this and she called in the reinforcements. Jane and Bob came over, and Bob helped me set the other 4 posts in place. Even with 2 people, it was still a challenge. The last post was the heaviest. It had been sitting in the middle of the stack at the lumber yard, so it was soaking wet. It took 2 attempts to lift it in place, but we managed. The rest of the work for the day involved drilling about 20 holes in the concrete wall to attach the ledger board, attaching joist hangers to this ledger board, bolting the beam to the posts, and setting the joists in place. Sounds easy huh. I stopped working at about 4:00 to clean up and prepare for company. Mom, Nancy, Paul, and Dean came over for dinner. They had all been at Dean’s powerlifting tournament, where Dean brought home the gold in his weight class. I would have liked to have been there, but I hated to miss beautiful deck building weather. I think the high temp today was about 65 degrees. Also perfect weather for Camille to play outside on the swingset while I worked on the deck.
03-05-10. This may be an easy one, but I'll go ahead and make it a 'Guess what this is.' Here's a hint: it has something to do with the deck project.
03-03-10. Camille (and Kate's) clay creations.
