Another Deck Weekend

This morning we were at Menard's by 9:00. JP's untility vehicle handled 2x8 x 18' treated boards with no problem. Like Honda says: "Respect the van."



Despite having frost on the grass this morning and a 10 mph steady breeze, we were in the sun and out of the wind all morning. We elevated our 2x4 frame to the finished level of the deck (about 1.5" below the house floor) and constructed two of the four beams. The biggest hassle was trying to level everything and making the boards conform.

Next step: order the 2x12 cedar boards to replace our make-believe 2x4's for the perimiter frame.

Lincoln Field Trip

I took a day off this week to go with CP's class on a field trip to downtown Lincoln.



We saw the County/City building, a fancy architectural firm, the main library, and went on a fun walking tour of downtown.

Deck Construction

The inspector came out and signed off on our footer holes and explained that we really did not need to have dug-out footers, despite what the guy that issued our permit told us. We anchored the posts to the patio and finished up the holes.

All the neighbors like to watch the slow progress. They all seem to think that it's funny to come by with cold beer, knowing that I have 6 more hours of work to do.

Today we poured the concrete footers. I think we used nearly 20 sacks of concrete for 5 footings. Next time we will rent a mixer.

Tomorrow we'll hit Menards for some 2x10's.

GP's Tooth

GP had three wiggly teeth. After yanking one out, he now has two.

Last week we had almost two inches of rain and the wind blew 30 mph non-stop all week. On Friday we had giant snow flakes mixed with the rain. Saturday morning the wind stopped and the sun came out and we had 70 ° with absolutely no wind all day. We worked on the deck and got sunburned.

Back from the Dead

We have not posted anything new lately - the hard drive on JP's laptop committed hari-kari and refuses to succumb to my amazing powers of resurrection. We lost all our family photos from October 2007 forward. Note to self: "Time to start a periodic backup program." Fortunately, I uploaded most of our Utah vacation photos to our web album, so all is not lost. I bought a backup drive a couple years ago, but it's full of junk and needs backing up itself.

Besides trying to rescue files from a dead hard drive, this past week I put in some CAD time and completed our deck plans. I haven't done any CAD work in quite a while, and I've never done anything architectural. I'm used to working with fairly detailed manufacturing drawings and my deck plans reflect that. When JP took them downtown for approval the guy laughed at them because they are somewhat oerkill for a deck project.

The drawings turned out to be OK and we got our building permit. Today we go to Menard's to start the real work. Step one will be to buy a hammer.