Time to build a deck. Laying down the bearers

Now that the holes are in and signed off by the council and the posts laid in and concreted, it's time to get on with building the frame. First step is getting the bearers down.

There's nothing better than delivery day! It means the wait is over and the fun starts. I've taken two weeks off work to get the frame done, so I'd better get on with it.

Who's this little creature hiding under the woodpile? This one is a bit of a house pet and lives in our front-yard. We've named it 'Lizzy' the lizard. Lizzy is an Australian blue-tongued lizard, here helping inventory the delivery.

There's 9 bearers required to support the back deck. Looking below at the plan you can see that some of them are quite long! The bearers will be made up of 2 x 90 x 45 MGP10 treated pine, nailed together, and offset to make the length of the bearer required.

I'll refer to the "left" side as everything on the left hand side of the plan, and the "right" side infers the right hand side of the plan as shown.

9 bearers in red

Below you can see the first bearer clamped up and ready to be nailed. I've alternated the joins to line up with the tops of the posts, giving the assembled bearer maximum strength. The clamps shows where the join points are located. 

For nailing and attaching to the stumps I am going 100% simple. The two 90x45's will be nailed together from either side down the length of the bearer, and then skew nailed into the top of the posts. Finally I will gang nail the bearer to the post on either side with Pryda 50 x 100mm galvanised strap nails.

First bearer clamped and ready to be nailed

There's a couple of tricky joins on the "right" required to be cut where two of the horizontal bearers need to connect in with another that crosses over at the "right" end of the deck on an angle. To maximise the strength of the join I'll cut half lap joints positioned over the top of the posts. 

To create the joins, once the horizontal bearers were down I then nailed together the timbers for the angled bearer, and then laid that beam across the ends of the bearers so I could mark out the joins with a pencil. After a few plunge cuts with a multi-tool, there was really no other way to create the join other than with a trusty "old school" wooden mallet and chisel. Back to basics! 

As you can see below it was a tricky cross over for the angled half-lap join. The result however is a piece of art! A shame to cover it up.

Angled half-lap joint complete

Where the centre bearer joins into the "right" side cross bearer was a little more straight forward to make. As this was a straight cut I set the circular saw to a depth of 45 mm (1/2 of the 90 mm timber) and made the two required cross cuts, then chiselled the joins out with a mallet and chisel. 

All the timber end cuts were sprayed with Tanalised Ecoseal to help preserve the life of the timber cut.

Centre bearer half lap joint. Another work of art!

Below shows the first completed three bearers in place with the two horizontal cross bearers linked in to the angled cross-bearer.

Three bearers completed

I now start laying out the fourth bearer, the longest one in entire the deck, measuring 14 metres in length. This is the only one which runs the full horizontal length.

Laying out the 14 m long bearer

Below is looking from the "right" end, showing the three completed horizontal bearers and the angled bearer

The fourth and longest bearer

Looking down from the "left" end of the deck back you can start to see the whole deck taking shape.

The four longest and trickiest bearers finished

On the "left" side there are two small bearers that need to wrap around the paved area to support where the decking joins up. 

The below photo shows the first one laid in.

Laying in the top shorter bearer and checking it for level

To make the decking "wrap around" a small bearer needed to have another half-lap join made to join into the shorter horizontal bearer. This completes the "left" side.

The "left" end of the deck bearers completed

I'm starting to get good at these half-lap joins! Below is a closer view of where the deck will meet the paving.

Another half-lap joint completed

Below shows the last three short bearers on the "right" side of the deck that support the decking where is joins into the side gate.

The "right" side short bearers completed

That's all nine bearers in and connected! Joining aside, it wasn't too hard a job, and best of all, they're all level! Bonus.

Next up I have to attach the ledger board into the concrete slab of the house to complete the bearers. The come the floor joists!

A yard full of holes. Gophers!

Gopher holes? No, it's not Caddyshack, but I do have to mention my favourite line from Bill Murray though: "I got to get into this dude's pelt and crawl around for a few days. Who's the gopher's ally? His friends. The harmless squirrel and the friendly rabbit"!

The holes are to be made by going nuts in the back yard with a post hole digger, not a gopher. Forty three posts are required to be dug to a depth of 600 mm and a diameter of 300 mm to hold up the eight bearers that will support the back deck.

That's a whole lotta holes!

There were way too many holes for my poor old Bunning's Chinese made post hole digger to dig, and my arms wouldn't have been able to handle it, so I called in Stefan to do the ground work for me. He hired an auger to fit on the back of his Dingo digger and set to digging. There's quite a large tree in the yard as has been previously detailed, so we were really worried about hitting tree roots, of which he found not one. However what he did run into was storm-water pipes! Lot's of them!

Below the RED line shows the storm-water pipes we discovered (and destroyed) with the auger.

Who knew there were so many pipes?

This was a nightmare on two fronts.

1. The storm-water pipe that ran across the yard aligned right where the post holes for the first bearer needed to go
2. That busted pipe intersected with another pipe coming from the front yard, which was right next to where the holes went in on the northern edge of the deck. The auger nicked the pipe four times meaning it would have to be dug out and replaced

Funnily enough that pipe was one that Stefan already hit when he was laying the circular paved area, so he was familiar with it already!

Tackling the first issue, it was off the to hire shop to get a trencher. Stefan then cut a new trench for the pipe between the first two rows of holes, and laid down a new section of pipe, connecting it in with the pipe coming in from the left of the yard. He then finished off the holes per below, where you can see all the broken pieces of pipe now littering the yard!

Three rows of holes and a new pipe laid.

Next fix was a little trickier. The smashed pipe coming down from the front yard needed to be replaced, but it also ran right along side where the row of holes were, leaving BIGGER holes and not enough depth to hold the footing without concreting in the pipe as well. Too much concrete and probably not a good idea to concrete in the pipe.

The solution was a product called Formatube, which luckily was sold at a place about 5 mins drive away called The Tubeworks in West Heidelberg. It did the trick! The pipe was repaired, the form tubes dropped in, and then the lot was backfilled over.

Holes dug, pipe fixed, forms dropped in. Problem fixed!

Next stop was the council inspection, however the rain gods decided to drop a ton of rain the night before the inspection, filling the bottom of the holes with water and slop (a technical term for sticky, sloppy, smelly wet mud). You all know the trouble I've had with the council on this project, and there's no way they'd pass inspection on this, so there was nothing else but to get horizontal in the mud and reach down and scoop it all out with a small bucket.

Two weeks later after digging the holes out another 10 cm deeper to get rid of the slop, and a lot of praying for no more rain, the council gave the holes the tick and we could start laying in the posts. 100 mm x 100 mm 'wet' treated pine.

Plopping in the posts

I left it to Stefan to set the posts as he had the truck, concrete mixer and other equipment needed. Like Dirty Harry says, "a man's gotta know his limitations". I'm happy to admit it would have taken me a month of Sundays to lay each post. He had it done in two days.

Panorama. All the posts are in!

Next up I start in on the frame.

Sizing up the next project and laying the ground work

Well this is the big one, the back deck. When we built the house I had always envisaged a deck hanging off the back in the grand plan, and it's going to be probably the biggest construction I have ever undertaken on my own. So let's build a deck!

As you can see from the plan below it's going to be quite substantial at 14 metres long by 5 metres wide. The deck also has two sets of steps, one large one to take the level down to the lawn area, and another smaller set of 3 steps to come up from the deck level to the rear entrance of the house.

The biggest thing I ever built was...

Below shows the pegged outline of the deck to be built. Towards the far end the deck will run around the edge of the house to meet up with the existing side gate, and the stair will run down to the right to the lawn area. I'll run a ledger board along the edge of the house and run the joists 90 degrees out from there.

Adding some string lines makes it real

The first issue I have to deal with is the the over-pour from when the house slab was laid. Slab construction (as opposed to foundation and stumps) is extremely popular in Melbourne, and where we live was no exception, however it's not an exact science. If they've ordered more concrete than fits in the forms for the slab, they tend to just let it slop over the edge, leaving an over-pour, which becomes a nightmare for us deck builders.

As you can see from the photo below I have at least 50 cm of concrete hell to get through (that's 20 inches in the old scale) and I have no idea how deep it goes.

20 inches of concrete over-pour with an unknown depth

The whole over-pour has to go, as the council regulations won't let me lay a ledger board into the brickwork if there is a window present, and as can be seen in the top picture, I have a window present! Because of this I am regulated to attach the ledger board to the concrete slab. To achieve this I need to have a clean edge on the slab that I can bolt into, and the only way I can think to achieve that is with a concrete saw.

The engineer who did the engineering assessment of the design for me luckily had some contacts in the cutting industry and I arranged to have the edge of the slab cut with a diamond wet saw. When the guy came he had a number of tools to choose from, but owing to the overhang of the window sill (see the right picture below) he opted for the hand-held, petrol powered one. Damn noisy it was too!

It did make quick work of the edge though, and he took the cut down as deep as the blade would allow. The closest he could get to the wall without damaging the render left about 100 mm of concrete edge sticking out from the wall with a hopefully clean cut down. From memory it cost around $300 to get complete.

Once the edge was cut it was up to yours truly with the trusty electric jack-hammer to remove the actual concrete.

I love heavy machinery

After it was all cleaned up, I had an edge wide enough to take the ledger board (90 x 45 MGP 10 treated pine) and have it bolted straight into the concrete slab

The jack-hammer makes light work of a hard job

Marvellous (and heavy) though the jack-hammer is, I still had cause to get the mallet and cold-chisel out on occasion to help break the concrete away. The end result though was a lovely smooth surface across the entire back of the house.

Conquered Concrete

Next up I need to dig some holes. In fact I need to dig 45 of them, not a job for the feint hearted.

Now screening the uglies

Now the deck is completed (and of course it looks sooo beautiful) it's pretty obvious that it's surrounded by some very ugly structures. In this exciting instalment we're going to erect some screening to hide the uglies, because who really wants to see undies flying in the wind while you're enjoying cocktails on the deck?! First up is the utility area which is going to get a screen makeover.

The first step in building any screen is laying in the frame posts. In this instance I am using some rather tall 125 mm x 75 mm Cypress Pine posts, dropped into 60 cm deep post holes with concrete footings. These will sit in the garden bed right in front of the retaining wall of the garden utility area. The screen is pretty high at 2.5m, as I want it to close off the utility area completely from view.

First step, dig some holes. I told you buying the post-hole digger would come in handy again (at least that's what I tell my wife)!

Dig dig digging again

As you can see below the posts are in and I'm fitting the rails on to hold the screening. The rails are 75 mm x 50 mm treated pine, fitted into notches in the post that I knocked out with a hammer and chisel. Sometimes the old school hand tools are the best don't you think?

Fitting the rails

Here's the finished frame with everything nailed together nicely, and it's even level! Time to fit the screen.

Fence frame done

When I originally conceived this screen in the garden plan my thought was to clad it horizontally with more decking boards. However I changed my mind once the deck was finished as it might just be "too much" wood with boards running everywhere.

On a visit to the Melbourne International Flower and Garden show I came across a fantastic Australian made product called Outdeco Gardenscreen. They are 1200 mm x 600 mm modular panels made from laser cut "tempered hardboard" (very similar to 'Masonite') at 9 mm thick. They come in a wide range of patterns, and include a 10 year outdoor warranty. The pattern I selected is called OSAKA which offers 80% block out, as well as blends in with the overall Japanese theme to the decked area. The panels were available locally from Chippies Timber in Melbourne, but there is plenty of stockists listed on their site.

Sizing up the Outdeco screens

I spaced the posts at 1200 mm centres, and railings at 600 to accommodate 4 panels high by 3 across. 12 panels in total (well 11 and a 1/2 as one needs to fit around the stone wall). The posts had to be painted before the panels are mounted, otherwise you'll see the timber through the panels.

Half way up one row

The panels are very easy to install. I just clamped them up and drilled four countersunk holes across the top of the panel, four across the bottom, and one on each side. I then screwed them down with some leftover decking screws. Once they were all fitted I applied wood filler over the top of the screws, sanded, and then gave them a coat of paint. You could also glue them down, but I thought the screws would be plenty. One ugly done!

First row done, two to go

As well as the utility area to screen off, I also had a rather ugly paling fence sitting behind the water feature that I wanted to screen off. The fence wasn't build level owing to the trees coming over from the block next door, and it just made the whole area look out of kilter.

For this screen I constructed a frame out of treated pine attached directly to the existing fence that I wanted to cover up. It consisted of three posts screwed into the fence, and three rails across the top, middle and bottom. Simple stuff. For covering up this ugly I am going to use a different product called Natureed Screening which I ordered direct from the supplier House of Bamboo in Sydney, . 

Framing up to get rid of the uglies

I really love this stuff because it does such a great job with a really professional looking result. It's made from a collection of 5mm diameter bamboo reed, bound tightly with stainless steel wire. The lengths are woven together in rows to form a complete sheet. I brought two 1.8 m x 3.66 m rolls which was enough to cover the entire length, giving am instant cover up of the ugly underneath! Again, make sure you paint the posts and rails before you fit the rolls, otherwise they'll show through. I dragged out the trusty old Mission Brown again for this occasion.

Natureed

As I'd made the frame the exact size required to accommodate the sheet size, it was a breeze to fit. You just clamp a section of it up, and then staple the cladding to the frame using galvanised staples in a heavy duty staple gun. Get your fingers in and just spread a section of the reeds apart, then staple across the stainless steel wires, then push the reeds back together.Once mounted, I then framed each panel using leftover decking boards with mitre joints on the corners, using the Deck-Max plugs to hide the screws. One more ugly gone!

Outdeco panels are all on, and first Natureed roll is up

The last bit of unintentional ugly left behind is the rock wall. When Stefan built the wall I wanted the top of the wall the be always dead level. Looking at how it was now with the screening up, it would be much nicer if the level changes formed actual garden beds rather than just the slope. 

To achieve this, a new wall small would need to be built across from the drop point of the wall to meet the bottom of the lovely new Natureed screen panels.

Screens completed, time to do something about that wall

I wasn't going to get Stefan to come back just to build a little wall, so I decided to be the hero backyard warrior again and have a crack at it myself. I headed off to a local stone supplier Chris Cross (and no, he didn't make me JUMP, JUMP) and selected a pile of Mudstone pieces that I though would fit the gap. A good selection of big ones and small ones in as squarish a shape as I could find them.

I then just basically followed what Stefan had done, as I had plenty of photos to guide me along! I dug and laid a compacted foundation, put a stringline up, and then picked and placed the stones, fixing them with mortar, and giving the occasional bit of adjustment using an angle grinder with a stone cutting blade. Mudstone cuts like butter luckily, but wear a mask when cutting as it's pretty dusty work!

The end result was a nice enclosed garden bed that met up with the edge of the screen, and you'd never pick that I built it!

Wall fixed

The final piece of beautification was putting in some plants, and of course the objet d'art to fill the hole I'd left in the deck. When I was looking for water features I came across these teak balls being sold at a local place called Water Features Direct. They come in three sizes and are made from distressed teak assembled with nails into a ball shape. Tres' artsy! 

The small one was going to do nicely, so I had them mount it on a concrete plinth (which actually comes from a bird bath) which they stuck some steel reo into, which the ball then mounts onto. Add a couple of lights and the job done is done.

Plants in and looking good

Here's the final side yard product. Deck done, screens up, wall built, plants installed, and lights in.

The side yard is done dude

There's still the ugly old wheelbarrow storage area to deal with, but that's going to have to wait until the rainwater tank goes in up behind the garage. I'll then build a set-back Outdeco screen to match in with the main one giving a (hopefully) seamless view. There's always something to do isn't there?

Let's build the side deck step 4. Blinging your deck

Bling - Verb (used with Object): to dress or adorn in a flashy way
Classy - Adjective: of high class, rank, or grade; stylish; admirably smart; elegant.

Obviously there's more to building a deck than just a hammer and nails. Even the simplest construction needs a little "bling" added to make it look an inviting and serene environment. It needs to be a place where you want to hang, not just a place you walk through to go and hang out the washing! 

The grand plan has always been to have a water feature included as part of the deck. I visited multiple places around Melbourne that sold water features such as garden centres and specialist suppliers etc looking at different options. The options were somewhat limited as I had specific sizing requirements to fit in the area I'd left aside between the edge of the deck and the stone wall, which was only 410mm wide. 

I eventually settled on a three column concrete feature from Pond Art Water Gardens which at 400mm deep that was going to (just) fit nicely, and have that lovely "Asian" look about it I was after. 

These features are made in Indonesia and imported by Pond Art, so you need to give them a bit of lead time to arrive. They're also made of cast concrete and weight a ton, so please don't try and install it yourself! It's a specialist job and one I was happy to pay the $220 for (and save my poor aching back).

David and the team from Pond Art turned up on time as agreed and got straight into it.

Delivery day

The water feature has a hefty weight to it being made of reinforced concrete so takes a few burly blokes to get it out of the truck. One, two, three HEAVE! 

Manhandling the thing off the truck!

Not a job you can do on your own!

Being shipped over from Indonesia the water feature comes really well packed. Nothing a circular saw can't deal with though! Below you can see the columns being released.

Release the Fountain!

The first step is getting the basin of the fountain in place. There's not a lot of room to move there as the feature is 400 mm deep, and I left a 410 mm gap for it to fit into! You can see David from Pond Art's fingers getting jammed in behind there.

Dave: "Jeeze there's not a lot of room back here mate!"

With some judicious wiggling from the guys the basin goes in like a glove, sitting nicely on the concrete pad I laid just the weekend before; and I might add, sitting dead level with the decking.

Basin installed and level! The guy (me) who put in the concrete pad was awesome.

For setting the towers up there were a few different options as they are differing heights. I chose to have the tallest in the middle with the shortest on the left, and the middle tallest on the right. Below you can see the tallest tower in place. They're packed in using precast concrete spacers to hold them in place.

First tower installed

The rest of the install is all about manhandling the towers into place and getting them all even and level. There's a set of plastic tubing that the water travels through from the pump, that plugs into the tubing embedded within the towers when they were cast. Below you can see the team doing the final assembly.

Getting the towers spaced and levelled (ignoring David's butt-crack please!)

After everything is settled, balanced, and leveled, the pump is then plugged into the 240v power and the basin filled with water for the final test! IT WORKS! I then ran the cable (the pump comes with a 15m cable which is great) under the deck to the external power point I had fitted earlier when building the frame.

The last thing to complete the deck is to apply the finish. To start I gave the deck a light sand with an orbital sander to remove any scuff marks that happened during construction. I guess I could have hired a floor sander, but there really wasn't a lot of mess to clean up so I just used a domestic sander. It probably took half a day on my knees, but it worked really well.

There's a great sticky post on the Renovate Forum regarding preparing, cleaning and oiling your deck if you ever have to undertake this, that has lots of great options and plenty of product feedback. It's worth reading from top to tail.

After the sanding I applied a coat of Feast Watson "Merbau on Merbau" which gives it that lovely dark look and brings out the golden colours in the timber as you can see below. It goes on as easy as pie using a deck oil applicator on a stick.

Be warned that this stuff stinks to high heaven with a nasty chemical smell. If you're sensitive to chemical smells I'd advise getting a respirator to wear. I had to stop a couple of times to get fresh air and had a shocking headache after I finished.

A bit of spit and polish and it comes up a treat!

Two coats. Job done!

That's it! Job done. The side deck construction is now completed in four easy steps.

• Step 1 - Dig some holes
• Step 2 - Lay the frame
• Step 3 - Lay the deck
• Step 4 - Bling!

OK maybe it wasn't that easy, but it sure looks great in my opinion. What do you think? Feel free to comment below.