Home Improvement Today?

That was my idea but the wife is worried sick I’ll burn the 500 acre field behind the house to

 

Run a hose out, no worries

 

This pile is a long ways from a water supply. It’s on the back end of my 5 acre back yard.

 

So we have this small 10x12 deck that's 14+ years old. I've maintained it over the years...replacing a few boards and staining it and whatnot. But it had just become your typical tired old wooden deck. So I decided to strip it down and assess the frame/structure.

Turns out the frame was solid...no issues. The stairs, though had some problems. Frankly I'm surprised they hadn't collapsed on the left side. Nothing but rot.

The wife said she wanted before and after pix. She failed at the before. But you get the idea.




So we cleaned up the frame and railings, stained the railing and posts black, along with all the joist tops. We also added some butyl joist tape to further protect them. I rebuilt the stair stringers. Not pictured is some additional structure I added between the stringers. The Trex composite decking requires a 16" OC. That spacing exceeded that.



Next came the Trex composite decking in Sand Stone color. It has some subtle black streaks in it that compliment the black wood. I decided to pony up and use the Trex hidden fasteners. Very tedious. But certainly worth it. Where I couldn't use the fasteners, I used color matched Deckmate composite screws. These things are great. No splitting or mushrooming. I still pre-drilled each hole just to be safe.

Finished product.




I'm sore.

 

Exactly what I need to do to my deck. It’s 25 years old

 

Looks great! Good job man!!

 

Looks good! Extending my porch is on the list for this summer

 

More moving today

Sawhorse trip #1 lol

2/8', 2/6', 2/3' and 4/2'

that only leaves 8/3' for trip #2 tomorrow haha

 

Thank you gentleman

 

I built a surround around my patio last summer, but since I wasn't a member here last summer, I'll post it now.

The closest I got to before pictures:



During:





After:



Details:



Those notches were an absolute pain in the ass!



I wasn't going to build this without having a switch for the string lights. Took a bit to figure it out bit it works great.

The patio faces the west so in the evenings, it's absurdly hot out there with no shade. After building the surround, temps dropped about 15 degrees and the 5/4"gaps let plenty of breeze through still. I'm very happy with it.

I have a few things to finish up, most shouldn't be difficult, other things I still have to draw up then build. Once the snow is finally gone, anyway.

 

I used it last fall on my yard. Did a blanket application of it. The bottle will last a lifetime with how much it gets diluted. Worked really well.

Make sure you water the shit out of the seed. Usually people overseed in the fall so summer doesn’t stress out and kill the new grass.

 

Yeah thats what I’m gathering unfortunately. I want a nice lawn but I’m not willing to spend tons of money to do it.
The Lawn Care Nut says you have to water 1 hour a day for 24 days. Fuck.

 

Very nice.

Thankfully by 5 pm most of our back yard is shade. So we really enjoy evenings out there. Now we can walk bare feet without the fear of splinters!

 

And all that hard work paid off

Very nice job

 

Thank you kindly

 

Joe

I'm a painter by trade since 1978.
You must be sensitive to VOCs (Volatile organic compounds) from the paint.
If you haven't purchased all your paint I would suggest Benjamin Moore because they have zero VOC products and their tint is zero VOC also.
You can look at any zero VOC paint but a lot of other paint manufacturers don't have zero VOC tint.

I would prefer to work over old floors hands down.
Haven't seen any harm to wood flooring because of humidity while painting.

Installing any new frames and doors the carpenters always use a piece of hardwood under the frame to adjust it's height for flooring. Then install your trim after your floor.

 

Luckily we’re on a high yielding well so we don’t have to pay for water. I’d hate to see the water bill that I would have ran up.

 

You know its always 6 dozen of one a half dozen of another. Wells are fantastic, until you need to redrill them or replace them.

So I guess we all pay someway

I just gotta suck it up for a year. Once the lawn is established it’ll be fine.
Thanks for recommending that guy on Youtube. I’m bingewatching his stuff.

 

Finally got all the flagstone laid for our front walkway. Just need to brush in the joints and it’ll be good to go. Had some left over so I built step drainage for our downspout on the far side of the house.

Front porch/stool is next on the list along with whitewashing the brick. Landscaping can hopefully go in soon after if our local nursery is still open. Feels good to be getting a lot of projects done.

 

There are many, many plus sides to a new house in a new neighborhood but shade isn't one of them! I could either build something or wait 10 years for the trees to grow.