What a superb weekend! Sunny AND productive.
I had laid the mortar I needed on Wednesday and Thursday evenings last week, and laid out the outer joists for my new garden deck on the Thursday evening. My mum came to visit on the Friday, bringing with her a bench saw borrowed from a friend in Cheltenham. I almost finished the main deck square’s joisting (square, my arse) Friday night.
So first thing Saturday morning I got the bench saw out and finished the joisting, banged it all together with 100mm oval ring nails, cut some noggins, banged them in and leveled the whole thing on gravel, slabs, blocks and wedges. It turned out pretty level. I cut some posts for the far end, as the deck is raised there where the ground drops down slightly. I drilled and tightened down coach bolts on them. I did the same for a smaller square that will eventually hold the barbecue that will sit behind the shed. I nailed that to the other frame and leveled it on more posts. Perfect.
Stu had turned up by then to give me a hand, whilst watching the FA Cup final on a portable TV balanced in the doorway of the shed. Once the joists were finished, plus other little jobs (sealing cut ends) we got on with laying the deck boards, which with a bench saw was an absolute doddle. Measure, cut, place. Measure, cut, place. And if the board was a little long, trim the end off on the saw. Easy with 2 people. So in no time the simple boards were all down, and we spaced them and fixed the ends. Light stopped play and we finished the day with beer and mexican food cooked by Kim.
Sunday morning I put the rest of the screws in the boards we’d laid (450 screws, all predrilled!), had a cup of tea, and sized up the remaining boards. Because the back of the deck is longer with that second square on the side I interlaced the boards, having one long board on the left, then the right, then the left and so on. No measuring, just laying the board down and marking the joist underneath with a pencil to see where to cut. Pretty quick.
The garden of course isn’s square, so the final boards at the very back had to fill a triangular gap and had to be cut to fit around a couple of posts. I borrowed a circular saw, measured, measured again, and still managed to screw up the first cut. All of the following cuts were fine though (I had learnt my mistake – too much sun?) and I had all the boards laid down pretty quickly. Stu helped me fix them, and we soon had the other 350 screws in place, and the deck was finished. It is a very quick way to cover an area of this sort of size (4.5m x 7m at the far end). I see why they use it so often in those rapid gardening programmes.
One last job to do: bang the fence up. With some of Stu’s ingenuity we finished it very quickly. Bench saw + rough cuts = very quick. Job done!
Jack had a good run around on the finished and definately approves. He loves being outside, so now he has somewhere safe to play. I think I’m going to sit outside this evening with my iBook and finish writing my talk for a conference in Belgium I’m off to this week. I can burn all the waste wood (of which there are only offcuts – good guess on usage, eh?) to keep me warm.
I had better pick a colour to stain it. That’s a job for next Monday as it’s a bank holiday.
