Our First Project of the Season- Weekly Update

Progress.  It's almost time for decking.  Wow. 

 

All the outer ledger boards needed to go on this week.  Let me tell you what, that circle was "fun".  Hubby and I tried it ourselves one night but I was out on the ladder holding a board over my head and we couldn't even get a nail in.  I can't hold a board over my head for that long, crazy man!  So, we quit for the night and recruited Caleb the following evening. 

 

 In one night we only got one length of board on, slow!  The next night hubby came home with a plan, he's so smart!  He added a support board underneath and where the boards meet, as well as a longer board farther down and was able to get started on his own (Caleb had to work and let's face it, I'm no help at this).

Here we are a little farther down.  See his longer support board, so smart!  Then, as if I wasn't already impressed, he comes out with a ratchet tie-down to pull in the curve.  Wow, worked really good and without much help he was able to make some progress. 

Some other interesting "helps" he's come up with.  Gotta be a little inventive when your only helper is me.

This is how he cut the joists off in order to form the circle.  He has a board screwed into the center of the circle that measures the diameter and rounds the circle to mark the joists to cut for a perfectly rounded circle. 

 

This one is great.  There's absolutely no way this could have happened with only the two of us.  I could carry the board to help get it up there but holding it for any length of time, over my head, that's just not within my physical capabilities.  Not gonna happen.

See that small piece of 2x4 sticking out.  There were two of them across the width of that long front ledger board.  The two of us put that up.  I'm still shocked.  I helped him lift the board up onto those two supports while he screwed it into the ends of the joists.  If it needed to come down a little for level we could twist the board out from under it and then put it back quickly.  Amazing how well that worked.

One of the joists was pretty wonky and needed more serious help so we wedged a long piece of 2x4 underneath that went to the ground and used a hammer to wedge it in as far as we needed to level it off so it could be nailed in. 

And looky here, that's the decking.  Cannot wait to start putting it on.  It's all coming together.

If you're interested in following our deck project you can find all the links here:   http://thechirpingfrog.blogspot.com/2015/03/our-first-project-of-season-2015.html
I will keep it updated as work continues.