Such a big day
Josh is out of town for work. I got up and nursed Gwen and got her ready for daycare. Jogged with her 25 minutes (which is about 2 miles for me) per my C25K program, dropping her at daycare at the end. Went to the grocery store for milk and eggs. Walked home. My parents were already there and had already removed one of the sliding glass doors onto the deck. We set to work disassembling the south stairs of the deck. And unfortunately discovered that the beam closest to the house was badly rotted. The other two beams seemed fine, as did the joists. We would have expected the beam closest to the house to be in the best shape, but for some reason it wasn't pressure treated. Maybe they thought they didn't need to pressure treat so close to the house. Or maybe the other two beams were replaced at some earlier time or something. We ended up ordering 100 board-feet of pressure treated 2x10 to not only replace the rotted beam, but also handle the 2 ft addition we wanted to do on the south side, and the 14 ft addition on the north side, allowing us to tie them in/cantilever them in a good "new work" sort of way rather than a funky "old work" sort of way. Amazingly, Parr Lumber was able and willing and able to deliver the 5 20-ft boards to us day-of (they were coming anyway to get their pallet back from delivering all the other material).
While moving the 14-ft 4x8 we no longer needed back to the front of the house so we could send it back to Parr to return, I dropped my end on my knee. It seemed to go down really hard, and my parents were surprised I was even able to walk, but amazingly, it didn't do too much damage. They insisted that I baby it and I put ice on it right away and for a couple hours, and it hardly even bruised up, at least not yet, almost 12 hours later. Not sure what happened, but somehow my knee must not have been the first/primary thing it hit.
We got the rotted beam removed in pieces around the time the wood was delivered. We did some more designing and math, to figure out the exact measurements we would need. We needed to cut up some wider pieces of pressure treated to make supports to hold the beam on the top of the posts, which required the table saw. The new-to-us garage sale table saw hadn't been used yet (by us), so we had to figure out how to get the fence and new blade on.
We ran some loops of strapping around our first 2x10 and the deck above. As we lifted the board, we tightened the loops. This meant, essentially, that we always had somewhere right there to set it down.
By this point it was time to get Gwen and I spent the next 90 minutes getting her from daycare, feeding her, doing bath, and stuff.
During this time, my parents jacked up the deck here and there, and used pipe clamps to get the beam into place between the tops of the posts and the joists. When I left to get Gwen, they were arguing about whether they should do the top first or the bottom first, but the fit was so tight that they weren't able to do either--it went straight in, pulled into position by the pipe clamps.
Then we made up leftovers and ate dinner.
What a big day! We got a lot done, but I must say it is pretty frustrating to work so hard all day and find ourselves actually with more left to do on the project than we thought we had when we got started this morning. But hey, it's not a surprise. I mean, we didn't know what setbacks we would run into, but I've done enough of these home projects that I wasn't naive enough to think we wouldn't encounter something.
While moving the 14-ft 4x8 we no longer needed back to the front of the house so we could send it back to Parr to return, I dropped my end on my knee. It seemed to go down really hard, and my parents were surprised I was even able to walk, but amazingly, it didn't do too much damage. They insisted that I baby it and I put ice on it right away and for a couple hours, and it hardly even bruised up, at least not yet, almost 12 hours later. Not sure what happened, but somehow my knee must not have been the first/primary thing it hit.
We got the rotted beam removed in pieces around the time the wood was delivered. We did some more designing and math, to figure out the exact measurements we would need. We needed to cut up some wider pieces of pressure treated to make supports to hold the beam on the top of the posts, which required the table saw. The new-to-us garage sale table saw hadn't been used yet (by us), so we had to figure out how to get the fence and new blade on.
We ran some loops of strapping around our first 2x10 and the deck above. As we lifted the board, we tightened the loops. This meant, essentially, that we always had somewhere right there to set it down.
By this point it was time to get Gwen and I spent the next 90 minutes getting her from daycare, feeding her, doing bath, and stuff.
During this time, my parents jacked up the deck here and there, and used pipe clamps to get the beam into place between the tops of the posts and the joists. When I left to get Gwen, they were arguing about whether they should do the top first or the bottom first, but the fit was so tight that they weren't able to do either--it went straight in, pulled into position by the pipe clamps.
Then we made up leftovers and ate dinner.
What a big day! We got a lot done, but I must say it is pretty frustrating to work so hard all day and find ourselves actually with more left to do on the project than we thought we had when we got started this morning. But hey, it's not a surprise. I mean, we didn't know what setbacks we would run into, but I've done enough of these home projects that I wasn't naive enough to think we wouldn't encounter something.