Deck Transformation!

While looking through my photos, I realized I had never posted our finished deck!  My bad!  So, here is a re-cap!  The deck on the Shack goes across the front of the house on the 2nd story.  When we bought the Shack, 5 years ago, we knew we would need to do something with it.  It was functional and not bad looking, but the railing was wobbly in places and there was rot in the beams where they stuck out from under the roof over the deck.  I guess the previous owners had not thought that treating them with something was worth the effort.  Anyways...

Here is what the deck looked like for about a year, from 2011-12, after we took off the rotten wood and the railings.  Trev was left with the task of creating a base for the deck that would also serve as a roof for the sunroom that we had decided to put under the deck.  It had been open, but we wanted to utilize the space for more house.  So, I went off to cook at camp the first year, hoping to return to a finished deck.  Silly me!

While we were away, Trev did manage to put down a layer of tar paper, covered with rolled roofing, all tarred and tacked and water tight.  We liked the look of the old decking which was very thick, heavy, rough cut lumber.  It was uneven though, so the plan was to plane one side to even it all out.  Well, when the cats away....Trev started to put down the old decking on top of landscaping ties, without planing it. Basically, what he did was make pallets with the ties and the planks.  Each section, or pallet, was about 8' x 4' and heavy!!!  The picture above shows them in place on the deck.  It looks okay in the picture, but the gaps between the boards were huge!  Like 1" or more!  Everything would fall through them and disappear!  So, as much as I hated to do it, and I put it off, believe me...I had to ask that we re-do it.  He had not gotten it finished anyways, so, that made it a bit easier.

Anyways, instead of taking all the pallets he'd made apart, we carried these very heavy and big things along the side porch, and down to the driveway, where they sat as a sort of  'dock' to the front steps as in the picture above.( I finally moved these with Alley last summer just prior to our family reunion.)
Now that the deck was back to just the roofing level, we went and bought proper treated decking.

I was pretty excited!  We had the family reunion coming up in August, I was going to be heading to tree planting camp again in May, and I wanted the decking down before I left.  We had already decided to get a guy in to do the basement and thought we might as well get him to finish the railing on the deck as well. So, it needed to be done to that point so he could get it done while I was away.  We got started...

Treated 2 x 4's first....

Followed by treated 1 x 4 decking, pulled very tightly against each other and screwed in place.

Continuing...

And so on...

Decking done!

This is how the deck looked when I left for tree planting camp in May 2012.  Off I went with high hopes of lots being accomplished while I was away!  Unfortunately, the deck was not done when we got home...but it did get done in time for the family reunion!  The bedrooms for the kids were done though, which was great!

So, here it is all done!  Yay!  It was ready and all safe for my granddaughter and my twin nieces to play on.
There are still a few last bits to do, like trim to cover the flashing with all the tar drips showing, but for the most part it's done!  I enjoy our deck so much!