A shelter from the storm

Hello all. With the house and garage rounding into shape, we continued to plug away at our outside projects. Having turned the garage into a workshop, we needed a place for lawn equipment such as the lawnmower and decided to have a dedicated shed for such tools. Fortunately we had just the spot, a former rock garden (unintentional) behind the garage.

Our first task was the remove the rocks that we had casually tossed there when we cleaned up other parts of the yard.

We had a bunch of options for a base but decided to use pressure treated 2x6 pine boards and have them rest on concrete pillars.

That's twice as many pillars as we needed for this project because--surprise--we were working on three projects at once. We'll get to the others in a bit. As we leveled and prepared the ground behind the garage...

we also built the frame for the platform...

The leveling gods smiled on us. It must have been the offering of wood chips.

What's that you say? What became of all the rocks we displaced? We tried to dress up a couple bushes and thought it turned out pretty well.

We thought everything was in good shape until a flash of realization came to us--that platform would make the entrance to the shed too high (or the ramp to get up to the door too long). How would we square this circle? And how would our decisions on this project relate to the others we were doing?

Until next time.

Riding into town on a rail

Hello all. When last we left our intrepid remodelers, they had a completely resurfaced back deck. What would they need to do to finish it? We're glad you asked. You're a precocious one, aren't you?

After looking through the various available options, we settled on this product because it gets good reviews, seemed durable, and was available from our local Home Depot. Assembly isn't too bad either. After securing the posts (making sure they're level) at the desired distance you cut the railing to fit. It comes in 6-foot and 8-foot lengths. Simple work for the power saw although the little plastic filings went EVERYWHERE! (P.S.: The bungee cord around the railing section was a tip we read on the Interwebs and boy did it help. The whole unit is a little loose until installed and this kept everything tight and more maneuverable.)

The next step was to mark where the brackets go on each post. This part was a bit finicky trying to hold the bracket around the railing and the whole thing steady to get a good marking the pilot holes.

We got two lengths in place along one side, liked what we saw, and decided to keep going. Now our request that the deck guys install an extra 2x6 along the outer edge of the deck came in handy because it gave us more area into which we could secure the screws at the base of the posts.

We opted to largely mirror the railing that had been on the deck. 

This meets code by going around the parts that are high enough to warrant a railing. Plus we thought that it might be too crowded with a railing all the way around.

Besides we thought that it might be nice to have some areas with unobstructed views.

Whether at dusk...

Or at night...

You can be the judge.

Until next time. 

We got decked

Hello all. With the weather beginning to turn toward Spring we focused our attention on some outdoor projects. There have been several things on the "to do" list that we wanted to tackle in anticipation of spending some quality time outside.

The biggie was figuring out what to do with the back deck. The previous owners gave the area a full foundation in anticipation of building a sunroom, but instead it was covered with these gray plastic faux-boards:

Oh, that stain was rusty water that leaked out of the handle of a metal deck chair. No one died in the filming of this blog. Anyway, the first step was to remove all of that decking to see what shape the floor joists and other wood was. Even though the allure of the plastic is that it's waterproof, we already knew that it let water through that was then trapped in the boards.

Not terrible but not great. We should add that we decided to outsource this project. Could we have done it? Sure, but what the crew did in one week would have taken us 2-3 that we could spend elsewhere. These were the same guys who did such a nice job on the drywall and insulation in the garage. None of the joists needed to be replaced but all the facing around the deck and one other board were rotted through.

One early decision was whether to run the boards all the way across or to frame the deck. We opted for the framing.

We added 2x6 boards around the rim as well under the decking to give us options when it came to install a railing.

Naturally we had to do something with the steps.

With everything together we were pretty pleased with the result.

 
In the next chapter we'll take over from the guys to do some finishing touches.

Until next time.