A Deck Reborn

Hello all. When we last saw our heroes...we were pretty cheesed off. After declining to have the contractor spend yet more time at our place and realizing we couldn't live with the deck as it stood, we settled on the best option left (ruling out having another contractor come in to redo the job)--we tackled it ourselves.

After we took off the decking boards we noticed another construction problem. The four 4x4 posts cemented into the ground make up half the underlying structure. A board attached to the house is the other. Between them you run the joists to which you attach the decking boards. The joists are supposed to attach around these 4x4 posts, but the contractor placed one post in the wrong spot and had to cut it short/notch out where the right-most joint needed to go.

We couldn't do much about that but made several other fixes to try to center the deck by adding another board to the left side...

 

center the screws on the decking boards by adding boards to the the left sides...

and lower the stairs to get our desired 6x10 platform by adding a new facing board below the one they installed...

 

Then we had to address the stairs. We would reuse the concrete paving stones but sink them to avoid having the stairs on the right be too high above the ground. Since we knew the stringers would be level where they attached to the deck, we needed to make sure they'd be level where they hit the pavers.

 

Then we attached the stringer to our new, lower facing board. The little blue clamps held the stringer and hanging bracket together until we could attach them with screws and the big orange clamp (along with the paver) kept the stringer at the right height. Again we double checked to ensure everything was still level.

We had planned to use only six stringers but revised the plan when we thought that the extra space might make the deck boards on the stairs susceptible to sagging or bowing. Unfortunately we realized that only after we'd attached some 1x8 boards as the risers, so we had to finagle the last two stringers under the deck and into position.

 

With that settled we could finish attaching boards on the stairs...

and then finish the whole thing by attaching the deck boards...

 

We'll figure something for a handrail, but for now here's our deck. We're much happier with it.

Until next time.

When one door opens...

Hello all. After about a year (it's been a year?!?) we are getting to the point where we are fully finishing off some rooms.

Case in point, with the stairs and baseboard installed and paint on everything that isn't nailed down (actually there's paint on everything that IS nailed down), we could install a new closet door.

The location made the door a non-standard height (platform a little too high, ceiling a little too low). That required some alteration, in this case shaving a few inches off the bottom.

We thought we were pretty clever to save the piece between the doors--the part with the small holes for some of the hardware. We used a few nails to reattach it and thought we were all set. Unfortunately our first attempt had a setback because the weight of the door put too much stress on the reattached piece and it collapsed up into the door. Our second idea was to run some short dowel rods and glue through the both sides and the reused part between.

Primer and a couple coats of semi-gloss white and a shiny new doorknob and we could officially proclaim the closet/landing area done!

Until next time.

A Deck is Born

Hello all. It's a tale as old as time. People need contractor. People meet contractor. Contractor messes up job. People clean up after contractor. How many times have you seen that plot in Hollywood blockbusters?

We had what we thought was a simple project--to replace the front steps to The Cottage. The previous version had a number of shortcomings, not the least of which were it's small size and the fact that it had settled and created an uncomfortably high gap to the house. The platform at the top was 2x3 which, considering the screen door is wider than 2 feet, meant you couldn't stand on it and open the door.

The job seemed straightforward. After talking to a number of potential contractors and receiving estimates from a few (and getting ghosted by the rest) we thought we had the right person. One afternoon the crew came to set the footers in anticipation of starting on the deck the next day.

We were encouraged. They made good, if slow, progress during the next couple days. One reason for the modest pace was that the "crew" consisted of the experienced contractor and two assistants who had never done this type of work. To compound the problem the contractor used our deck as a teaching tool, often taking a step back from the work which had implications for how much work got done per day and, as we later discovered, for the quality of the work.

It was after the second full day that we stood at the curb to examine the progress and discovered something was amiss. Can you see it? With the two posts up close to the house especially it was clear that the deck wasn't centered on the door, as we'd requested.

When we examined the mark they'd made at the bottom of the door it was obviously off center. They hadn't found the middle of the actual door or the door+frame. Then because the contractor put the stair stringers at the top of the frame the dimensions got out of whack. We'd asked for a 6x10 landing and confirmed that many times, but the measured dimensions were about 7x9. 

The slope of the yard yielded a bad jerry-rig under the front step and made the height uncomfortably high on the right side. That is a random stack of stuff they jammed between the cement paving stone and stringer.

The contractor decided to install lattice that we'd never discussed.

We'd asked them to put the screws in a straight line but despite drawing a pencil line as a guide they couldn't manage that. We have superimposed a blue line over their pencil mark.

And they made an odd, atypical choice on the stairs by making the (vertical) risers longer than the (horizontal) treads.

This was the so-called "completed" deck, replete with its faults. We told the contractor we were most displeased with how he chose to manage the project. 

• He never asked/advised us about using this as a training project, with the obvious implications for how long it would take. We might have agreed but were never consulted. 
• He unilaterally changed aspects of the project such as adding lattice, putting the posts up close to the house for a handrail we didn't want, and using the wrong size deck boards (5/4 x 4 instead of 5/4 x 6 in case you're curious). 
• Finally, several times we thought we had agreement on some facet of the job only to find he'd reneged or ignored the joint resolution.
  

He offered to fix any problems but after having him and his team at the house for six days we decided to cut our losses.

Until next time and the resolution of this story.

Bathroom furniture

Hello all. It's been a little while since we caught you up on our efforts to finish the first bathroom we tackled. Well nature abhors a vacuum and so does a bathroom, apparently. In an already small room we had this little space beyond the shower that we wanted to maximize.

As with some of our other "new" furniture, we repurposed some old cabinets. This time we breathed new life into the unit that used to be above the refrigerator in the kitchen (for nostalgia you can see it in the third picture of this post).

After removing the doors and hardware we set the table saw to bisect the cabinet and ran all four sides through.

We added a piece of 1/2-inch plywood to fashion a new bottom of our new half-cabinets.

Why use only half the old cabinet? From the picture above on the size of the niche you could see the sloped ceiling meant we had some serious height constraints. Half of the old cabinet is all we'd be able to fit atop a 15-inch base cabinet that we bought from Home Depot.

We had the kind help of someone to turn leftover old oak flooring we had from our previous house renovation work into a beautiful countertop that we sealed with a clear finish.

With everything painted to match the walls we could add the pieces.

And here's the final assembly.

Until next time.