Deck building. Laying in the ledger and joists

Now that the main bearers are down it's time to turn attentions to the ledger board.

As previously posted a fair amount of preparation had to be done for the ledger board for structural reasons. The ledger is required because I couldn't get in close enough to the house to dig post holes due to all the concrete over-pour in the ground from the house slab foundations. The additional engineering complication was due to the window. The local building regulations don't allow the ledger to be put into the bricks under a window, so the ledger had to be bolted into the slab, hence all the prep work.

The floor joists will connect into the ledger using Pryda joist hangers, and to enable this, the bottom of the ledger board needs to line up with the top of the bearers. 

The big question is, what do you use to hold up the piece of timber for the ledger, and keep it level against a flat concrete surface, while you are trying to drill and bolt it down, when there is only a few centimetres clearance? The answer? Whatever you can find laying around!

I used a couple of methods to help. First I marked up and drilled the holes in the ledger timber where the bolts would go. I then clamped a couple of joists to the bearers so they can "push" the ledger against the wall. Next up I grabbed whatever bits of flotsam and jetsam I could find to prop up the ledger timber, all the while keeping it level. Finally I used the product with a million and one uses, which according to Myth Busters is mankind's greatest invention, duct tape, which I use to hold it all in place. Is there nothing duct tape can't do!?

Below you can see the final assembled rig propped up and ready to be drilled.

Is there nothing duct tape can't do?

Once everything was held stable I drilled through the two end holes far enough to mark the slab, and then removed everything. Next I drilled the full holes into the slab using a hammer-drive drill and tungsten carbide bit, down to the appropriate depth, then cleaned them out and fitted in M12 Loxsin's.

Here's a tip for cleaning out the dust from drilled holes in concrete. There's no need for canned air or specialist tools, just grab a decent length of 6 mm poly garden drip hose, put one end in the hole, and the other end in your mouth, then blow! It works like a charm, just watch out you don't get it in your eyes if you're looking down the hole!

With the loxin's fitted in place I bolted on the ledger using the two end bolts, drilled the rest of the holes, removed the board, cleaned the holes, and fitted the rest of the loxin's. 

Before doing the final fit of the board I covered the inside with 110 mm malthoid flashing (per council requirements) then bolted it into the slab with M12 bolts and washers. Lastly I ran a strip of 45 mm Protectadeck stripping along the top and the job was done.

Ledger board loaded

On the "right" side of the deck the ledger board needs to be a little wider owing to the slab section of the landing being slightly lower so I used 110 x 45 MGP 10 treated pine for this section. Using the same methodology as the previous ledger section, I bolted it in as shown below.

A wider ledger was required for the landing

Now that the bearers and ledger are in place I can start laying in the floor joists. Below shows the plan for the joists.

Joist layout

The joists are 90 x 45 MGP 10 treated pine, and there's a lot of them! 33 to be exact. I'm using Pryda joist straps to hold them down, alternating left and right down the joists, and fixing with galvanised clouts. Below I am starting to lay them out.

So excited by joists!

I was so excited to see the joists go down! What can I say, I'm easily excited. The deck is now really starting to look like something. Slowly but surely the joists are creeping along the length of the deck.

Slowly the deck grows

The problem is however, I got so carried away with laying joists that I forgot a very important part. Laying the Protectadeck bearer protection strip along the top of the bearer! It had completely slipped my mind! What to do? Well....I could rip up all the joists I had laid and then put the strip down.....or not? I chose not. 

So I started laying the strip down from the point where I remembered! I'll fix it later somehow.

The joists continue ... with the strip installed

Eventually I hit the halfway point! You can see in the photo below one of the 300 mm noggins I made out of scrap up to help space the joists. I'd lay the next joist down, place the noggin in between it and the previous one, clamp across the noggin, and then fit the joist strap. Some of the joists were a little warped, so fitting the noggin and then clamping at either on the top or bottom (depending on the direction of the twist) of the joist would help straighten it out.

Inch by inch, row by row, one half to go

Using this space, clamp, fit and nail manufacturing like process, I quickly progressed to beyond half way and started moving towards the end.

Panorama. The progress so far.

Joist by joist, strap by strap, nail by nail. Looking ahead, below is where the stairs from the deck will lead down to the lawn area.

Getting closer

Eventually it was all done! There ended up being 35 joists in all, not 33, as I hadn't allowed for fitting around the down pipe near the door, and also I hadn't allowed for attaching a joist to the end of the ledger board which wasn't going to work, so I did have to juggle those around a bit.

Finished!

Next up I have to build the landing and steps for the back door. I've never done steps before, so this will be a new adventure!

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?