Deck build!

And so it begins!

We are building a back deck-so exciting!!  It is to be 12' X 20' when all is said and done.  240 square feet of outdoor space!  It's gonna be marvelous to keep the back door open and have Judah play on the deck, and I can work in the kitchen (window to the farthest right) looking out the window on occasion.

Early/mid April, Gabe (and my dad helped some) broke ground on the deck.  First, he dug four 30" deep holes to pour concrete footings for support posts.  Then, they worked on drilling into the brick siding to attach the ledger board with large bolts.

A visual of that day's progress:

A view from up the hill:

Gabe spent some time breaking brick away from the house too:

The next Monday, an inspector came to inspect the footings and that passed with flying colors.

Gabe (and dad) worked the following Saturday on setting the support posts and perimeter framing.

First, they needed to complete the ledger board to the right of the back door:

Continuing to work on perimeter structure:

Setting the structure posts:

Gabe created a landing pad for the lawn mower under the deck:

He used leftover pieces from the pallets making the shelves for the basement, with tar paper on the bottom.

Started work on setting joists:

Once the most of the joists were laid, Gabe installed the rail posts:

The stair stringers can be seen above.

Before the joists could be 100% installed, the existing porch pad had to be removed.  This was a concrete pad laid on top of brick, attached to the house by a concrete stoop.  

Here, he is scoring the concrete at the stoop to separate it from the house:

Progress breaking up the existing porch pad:

That took a lot of muscle to remove!

The rubble will be covered up!

Here is a shot of the joists in place over the existing stoop:

After the joists have been completed, here is a sweeping look at the view from the deck!!

Love it!!!!

Next, Gabe worked on digging post holes for the stairs going down to grade:

Then we got the framing inspected.  It passed!!  Yay!

Last weekend (Memorial day weekend), Gabe worked extra hard on the deck...he started with the stair framing:

A note about the stair location--instead of centering the stairs, we decided to line it up with the back door, so it's a little off center, but it makes sense.

More progress on stairs:

After this, Gabe and my dad start working on perimeter decking boards:

This part is complicated (and time consuming) because they needed to scribe around the posts.

Here he is starting on decking!!!

nice face Gabe.

A few treads on stairs:

A happy little boy with his coconut ice cream ("I-geem") on the new deck boards!!  :)

Mmmmmmmm!! perfect for warm dayzzz

Eerebody look to the left:

 Eerebody look to the right...

A couple of weeks later, Gabe started work on the handrails.  He smoothed them out real nice.

Here he is starting on the supports for the balusters:

with an onlooker

Aren't they cute?

Judah is getting better about not being afraid of the loud noise the saw makes!

must have just gone through the sprinkler too

A couple of days later with a bit more progress:

In July, almost a month later, one side is done!  

Looks so great:

Street view:

Lookin' sharp.

Detail shot, from on top of the deck:

Next, Gabe worked on the balusters down the steps and around to the other side.  These next photos was taken about a month later, in August:

And done!

More finished around the other side:

We got the final inspection in mid August--IT PASSED!!  Yay!  FOUR months later and we have a deck. :)

Next spring, we will stain the deck after the wood dries out completely (takes a couple months for this) and after we give it a good power wash!

We quickly proceeded to buy an outdoor table with benches so we could start entertaining out there:

I love it!!

I ordered it from a local company: Modern Rust.  Here is a link to the curved custom base detail they worked with me to get: http://modernrust.com/heatherTable.html.  It was Gabe and my birthday present to each other this year.

A detail shot of the deck stairs from the grassy ground level, taken in October:

I took a little time to landscape around the deck.  First, I dug out the grass, then laid down weed paper, lined the bed with our 1890's bricks from Bluemont, and finished it with a fresh coat of mulch from the nearby landfill (free!!).

I happen to love it.  Come spring, we will have some flowering viburnum flanking the steps!  I will plant more in these garden beds later.  For now, it is getting established with some evergreen shrubs as well.

That's a wrap on the deck project!  I intend to follow up with our next basement projects soon.

Cheers!

New flower beds!

Our house was in dire need of some attractive landscaping!  It was in rough shape.  I think the last owners hadn't lived on the property for a while.  So I took it upon myself to do a bit of beautifying.

I wrote this at the beginning of April and didn't get around to posting until now:


Spring is coming and I can feel it.  We just had a burst of warm weather over the weekend and boy, was it great!!

From our last house project, we acquired some bricks that were at least 120 years old--consisting of a fireplace stack we needed to remove because it wasn't well supported in its foundation.  So here they sit:

First thing I did was remove those 3 loose concrete blocks blocking the concrete tub.

Also, I would like to replace the bush in the concrete tub.  With a lilac.  or a rose bush.  or something.  anything else!

I've already used a good many of the bricks to line the flower garden beds I have in mind that I started last fall, but didn't really spend too much time with that just yet.  I will be fixing it up with more finesse later--it was basically a placeholder I put in last fall.

Like here:

I planted 30 tulip bulbs last fall in this bed and I have seen about half of them sprout so far.  I still need to go through and till the soil, removing the weeds.  Here is what I have started so far:

It's been a week or so and I have been able to do a few things around the flower garden beds:

I weeded in the garden bed, fixed some of the bricks, (Gabe) took the bush out of the concrete tub, leveled it out, and I fixed the brickwork to the left of the tub.

Another job I started over the weekend--I wanted to create a lovely flower garden bed where there wasn't one before.  There were patches of daffodils growing up, but no defined space, so I took it upon myself to do just that.

I don't really have a "before" picture.  Except the pics from MRIS when we bought our house.  Eek!!  Well, here is a broad visual of the space being worked on:

The space I'm talking about is on the right of the house in this picture, at the edge of the driveway.

This air condenser has been moved it to another location:

What I did is till the soil, remove all the grass roots, displace the soil and lay down weed block.  I did so cutting around the daffodil patches, leaving them undisturbed.  I used the bricks to define the spaces and create somewhat of a tiered situation.  I covered the cinder block with the brick too, at least from the driveway entry point of view.

So, here is what it looked like after I did some work on it:

for now.

a close up

I still need to get more soil and berm it up to the house better, so it drains water and slopes away from the house.

I also need to add flowers :-)  A trellis for some climbing plants seems like a good idea to prop up against the house on the one side/corner.

These big bushes need to be trimmed back before spring gets underway:

And now:

Another pic from the side--I tilled the soil here too, adding weed block, mulch and a brick edging that can be seen better in this shot:

Gabe and I also cleaned up this large bush in the back yard--there was a ton of poison ivy all around...so now the piles are just laying there.

Gabe got poison ivy from this--a lot!!!  i feel so bad for him.  I didn't get any.


I'll post more pics as more gets done.

Cheers!

and happy happy spring!!!!