Step 1: Preparing to prepare

Now that we have the footings in the ground and a few of the post affixed in their post-cap saddles we thought we would start with a bit of a retrospective on what we've done so far in the planning and building process.

It all started when we first came to look at the house, before we bought it. Kevin is obsessed with decks... a deck was a major bonus for him when we were looking for a house to buy. The house we bought... good deck? Not so much. Our house had the most rickety, precarious looking deck we'd ever seen. Barely attached to the house, two of it's four supporting posts (actually 2x6s, not posts) sat on broken deck blocks that themselves sat on unlevel, heaved patio stones. The two remianing legs hovered above or barely touched the ground depending on where the ground was swelling. It had no railing for the stairs and the stair stringers (on which the stair boards are nailed) were attached to the frame of the deck with rusted, roting nails and screws of various sizes. The stair boards would bow every time we went up or down the stairs. So, not safe and ugly as sin.

If it was pressure treated wood to begin with it had long outlived its non-rotting capacities and had been slowly falling off the house for some time. There is no chance that it had ever or could have ever been covered by a deck-building permit... so it was like many of the decks in this area... scary.

We were eager to get it gone but I think Kevin shouldered more of the excitement for finally ripping it off and breaking it down. But a new deck needed a plan first. So we got to measuring, estimating and cleaning up the back to prepare for a new deck.