And then it was fall!

After an obligatory dump and supplies run, Saturday morning got off to a Very Exciting start.



Using a rented pavement cutter, Ryan cut one-foot-square holes to dig the deck footings, which had been previously located after determining there were no electrical, gas or sewer lines in the vicinity.

Ryan reports the pavement cutter sliced through the driveway like butter.





Next, it was time to dig four-foot deep holes for the footings. When we cleared away the pavement in the first hole, there was some cement debris so Ryan decided to dig the first by hand.



I also assisted.



The debris turned out to be a thin cement layer, probably an older driveway. Upon finishing the first hole, I remarked, "That wasn't so bad!" Ryan just loved that and asked that I be sure to include it in the blog.



While my involvement in the first hole was limited, I got involved in the second. After a little digging, Ryan determined that this soil was clear of debris and suggested we use the two-man auger. We'd rented it, after all.





I don't have pictures of this process since I was man number two, but it was actually not so bad. It cut through the soil slowly and steadily and without incident. We did have a few tense moments when we couldn't turn it off, despite following instructions. Once the motor was cut, we had to hoist the auger out of the hole with all the soil weighing down the corkscrew. We probably did that wrong, but we got it out.



Back we went to Home Depot to return our 4-hour rentals and then off to a few lumber yards to consider our decking options.



I've been strongly advocating for a grey composite decking for ease of upkeep. Ryan's been opposed because it’s fake and expensive. After much discussion, we landed on cedar. Turns out cedar is a pretty soft wood and not readily available (is this news to anyone else?). Our remaining options were Douglas fir or mahogany.

In the end, we settled on mahogany. I’d done some reading about Douglas fir decking and was not interested in a rather involved process of treating it with preservative, storing for two weeks, and then weather sealing. Additionally, the mahogany was only four dollars more a board than the Douglas fir. Our “deck” is really a glorified landing, 50 square-feet total, so we only needed to purchase 16 boards, which also kept the price down on this expensive material. Not to mention the mahogany is so, so pretty… and so we did it.

Along with the decking, we sprung for an invisible fastening system (why stop now!?) so that we wouldn’t have to face nail the decking. We figured if we were going to have this nice material, might as well not ding it up with a bunch of nails. We also picked up some clear wood preservative to treat and weather proof the decking.

Back at the house, Ryan used a tamper to level the bottom of the footing hole, measured the holes to be exactly four-feet deep and installed a PVC pipe footing system. It uses a a hollow 4-inch pipe and is pretty cool. Check it out here.

While he did that, I treated the decking. After fully installing the footings, Ryan added a ledger board, posts to the top of the PVC footing system, and began framing the deck. That’s where we left off day one.

Sunday morning it poured, but that didn’t stop us from our dump and supply loop. At Home Depot, we took a look at pressure treated railing options and weren’t that impressed, so we headed over to Lowe’s where we found some better options. Lest you think we’ve completely gone off the deep end with our mahogany deck, our plan is to paint the pressure treated rail system with a semi-gloss cream (house trim color) to dress up a cheap material so that it looks nice against the decking.

Armed with 40 balusters and top and bottom rails, we came home ready to work, but the weather had other plans. Instead, I spent the morning touching up ceilings and walls while Ryan helped with some housework (he said that if I can pull an auger out of the ground, he can mop the floors – love that guy) and got in some RMc work.

The weather cleared just in time for the 1:00 Patriots game. And so, the game went on DVR and Ryan headed outside (really love that guy). After securing the deck joists with hangers, we secured four posts with lag bolts and scribed the first piece of decking to the exterior wall. Ryan trimmed that piece and I treated the new edges with preservative. While we waited for the preservative to dry, Ryan trimmed out a couple of the posts in pine.

At 4:30, we busted out the Tiger Claw and began putting down decking. Love the no face nailing, but it’s a tedious process, made more difficult by how hard the mahogany is. As we moved further out from the house, it did get a little easier, though was still laborious work, especially on a Sunday evening. With five boards down, we called it a day and headed inside to watch the Pats game.

I’ll leave you with a beauty shot.  Can’t wait to see how the red door and mahogany play together (I’m predicting very well).