Step 5: Do something

An important lesson we've realized during the process of building a deck is: we are great at working together building a deck, bad at updating blogs.

So, in an effort to catch the blog up with the near completion of the deck, here are some pictures of the process (with photo captions):

Wood delivered and ready to go

Seemingly as soon as the wood was delivered and the holes drilled for the sonotubes (for the concrete pillars) we had to leave the country for a conference in Las Vegas... so there the wood sat and the holes rested until we got home and work could start.

Old deck is no more and the ground is leveled

Look at that clean space... 

Mr Post Hole (yes, that's actually his company name) arrives to start auguring our pre-marked post holes for the pillar supports for the beams. The holes are supposed to be at least 4 ft down (to get below the frost line) but our water table is so high that most, if not all the hole immediately filled with water and muck

Auguring is a two person job.... when the augur hits a rock the whole apparatus bounces. At one point the augur hit something buried beneath the surface (the old septic likely) and the back tires of the tractor lifted off the ground!

Our level ground is no more

Kevin cut the sonotube form for the pillars and put it in each hole to ensure they didn't collapse

I'm vainly trying to scoop out extra dirt from this hole. At one point I was stuck half-way down the hole until I realized  I couldn't really move my arms so scooping was impossible.