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The weather wasn't great, but it stopped raining long enough for me to finish the wood storage shed. I got the rest of the boards added to the sides  Then added a tarp and some bungies. I don't expect the bungies to last more than a season, I could always use ratchet straps or something if I had to.  Next mini projects are going to be: - Stacking the split wood I have laying around in the wood shed. I probably have enough to fill most of it. - SO MUCH STUFF TO BURN - Clearing off the remaining deck so I can start pulling up the deck boards and seeing what fresh hell awaits me
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Apr 17, 2019 13:34
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I ended up re-doing the tarp on the wood shelter. The first rain we got I noticed (unsurprisingly) the water was pooling on top of the tarp, so now the tarp goes up over the canoe as well. This seems like a better solution, albeit a bit funny looking. As time permits outside I've been putting wood into the shelter, it's probably about 1/3 full at the moment and I have a bunch more wood to put in there. Yesterday I got some kayak hangers in the mail. I've been wanting to do something better with these storage-wise for a long time. Instead of hanging them from the wood shelter, which probably also would have been a fine choice, I attached some 2x6s to the backside of the shed and attached the brackets to that. I may work on some way of securing them, but they are completely out of sight unless someone was virtually on our property coming from a field that they have no business in the first place. I likely won't bother, it wouldn't be anything a sharp knife or bolt cutters couldn't do anyway.  This freed up a huge amount of space in the shed. One of my next short-term projects is building a ~10'x2' section of shelves against the back wall to everything that doesn't need to be on the ground up and out of the way. In other homeowner news, we also had a pest control service come out and treat our property for carpenter ants. We'd had problems off and on for years and I was sick of trying to fix it myself. It can be up to 30 days to know whether or not it worked, but I'm optimistic, it already seems to be loads better.
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Apr 25, 2019 13:47
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Those kayaks look hecka good !
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Apr 26, 2019 13:23
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I really like this thread. I don’t have anything else to contribute but it’s nice seeing all the improvements you’ve made.
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Apr 27, 2019 21:16
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TheManWithNoName posted:I really like this thread. I don’t have anything else to contribute but it’s nice seeing all the improvements you’ve made. Thank you, I don't really do it for validation (obviously since I haven't done anything lately), but it's nice to see that other people enjoy the journey. I'm mostly using it so I can occasionally go back and see what we've done. It's hard to keep in mind the work that you HAVE done, sometimes. I haven't gotten much done in the last week, the wife had a girl's weekend and my son had 3 baseball games last week so there hasn't been much time to work on stuff. We're having neighbors over for dinner tonight so I took some time last night to assemble our new patio set. Nice new set on (still) crappy old deck  So far I'm quite pleased with the set. It seems to be of good quality and assembly was minimal. Chairs are comfy and I'm a sucker for rocker/swivel action. Lot's of other stuff I need to start / continue working on. Hopefully the next few weeks will be productive. dreesemonkey posted:In other homeowner news, we also had a pest control service come out and treat our property for carpenter ants. We'd had problems off and on for years and I was sick of trying to fix it myself. It can be up to 30 days to know whether or not it worked, but I'm optimistic, it already seems to be loads better. So far so good, the difference has been night and day.
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Apr 30, 2019 14:01
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Earlier in the week I took a half day because the weather was nice so I did some random cleaning up outside. I filled up the wood shelter with most of the good wood we had laying around (quite a bit probably isn't worth saving), I burnt some wood scraps and built a shelf for the shed out of the deck remains I still have a lot of cleanup to do in the shed, everything is still a scattered mess at the moment but I'm feeling good about some progress being made. I purposely made the bottom shelf higher so I could tuck the snowblower, etc up under there. Some longer-range plans would be to add some ceiling joists to add some non-jank storage up in there, and add some better lighting. I think I'd also like to add a lumber rack out there to keep the bulk of my scrap 2x4s out of my garage. I dunno. Onward and upward
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May 8, 2019 15:42
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Over the weekend I started working on the deck again. I got it cleared off and then started ripping up the deck boards. This was a fair amount of work, there were no loose boards and they were nailed every 16". Ultimately I came up with a pretty good system that seemed to work well enough.  I was very happy to see that all the structure looked solid, even the ledger up against the house. The flashing was in tact and aside from lot's of dirt and spiderwebs, it wasn't rotting away anywhere. I found some more ants, but I treated them with gel and I'm going to assume that will have taken care of them.  Sunday I was on cleanup duty. The wood I pried up from the deck was pretty brittle, I didn't feel like I needed to save it, not to mention that's 4000 less nails I'd need to remove. So I spent the first part of the day with my chainsaw cutting up the boards into sections. I started a fire and got rid of almost one pile of scrap I had sitting around (visible in the first picture), but it's probably going to be 2 or 3 days of burning to get rid of the (much larger) pile of deck boards. After the cleanup I decided to use some scrap from the old deck to add blocking to the joists. I never had any complaints about bounce or flex with the old deck, but I thought while it was exposed I might as well. The process wasn't difficult, but it just so happened it was the first hot and humid day of the year. I have to say, I'm very happy with the cordless tools I've purchased so far.  Next steps: - Add a layer of "tape" to the top of the deck joists. I don't think this is strictly necessary, but it's probably a good idea since I'm re-using the joists. The theory is it seals around the screws going in to it and prevents water from seeping in there and rotting away the wood. This deck section is pretty old and none of the joists are rotted out. But since there are a bunch of existing holes from the nails, I think this might be a good step. - I need to remove the outer band board visible on the last picture. This was sort of a ledger for the other section of deck I removed and it had some ant damage and in general looks crappy. It was fastened using big phillips screws of some sort, all of which have significantly rusted away. I was only able to remove one of them, so I'll need to reciprocating saw them apart or something. - I need to plan and frame out blocking for where my railing posts will be. Part of the holdup on that is I'm hoping to build a covered shelter for my grill and I need to determine if I should us 6x6s or 4x4s, whether or not I can just block them in and bolt them to the joists/blocking or if it should have contact all the way to the ground, etc. Something vaguely like this:  Might have to do some sketchuping to see exactly what I'm looking for
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May 20, 2019 15:52
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Some minor progress: - Cleaned up most of the vegitation/trash from under the deck (aside from a poo poo ton of broken glass, not sure where that came from) - Ordered the bulk of the lumber I need for 90% of the project - Sketchedup a design of the kind of grill covering I was thinking of. It's not exactly to scale since the grill and smoker are both slightly larger than what I have, but it's pretty close to what I was looking for.  Next thing I'll need to do, I grabbed some more official measurements of the deck, I'm going to start working on a general railing-post plan, if we're going to move the stairs, etc. Because until I make those decisions, I can't complete the decking. The posts will be blocked in by the joists and will come up/out of the decking, as opposed to bolting them through the outside of the deck joist/band. In the meantime I have some of the deck joist tape coming hopefully soon so I can get that knocked out sometime this weekend. I'm officially less than a month away from the deck needing to be useable (I can make do without railing and both sets of stairs), so it's starting to sneak up on me pretty fast.
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May 23, 2019 19:19
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That’s pretty sweet! I’ve spend so many hours grilling in the snow and rain....
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May 23, 2019 21:31
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Jealous Cow posted:That's pretty sweet! I've spend so many hours grilling in the snow and rain.... One of my least fond memories was smoking pork butts overnight, and at 5AM having to re-fill the charcoal while it's pouring rain outside. This would help and I also wouldn't have to worry about messing with covers anymore. I spent some time in sketchup yesterday and came up with a relatively good gameplan, I think. Exact measurements depend where the joists run but the design is flexible enough I think we can come up with something that works within 6" of this. We're ending up moving where the existing set of stairs are 4' or so. I think this will be a better use of space. An additional set of stairs will come off the other side of the deck to maybe a future concrete patio.  You may notice there is no railing behind the grill/smoker, this is intentional. I may end up putting it there eventually, but my ultimate goal would be to build an outdoor-kitchen type thing underneath the covering. I did a sketch a couple of months ago which also started the idea of the grill covering:  It would be a lot of work and planning and it's completely unnecessary. But it would look really nice! If there is any chance of this happening, it's not going to be this year.
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May 24, 2019 15:29
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Ooh lala, party at your house!
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May 27, 2019 12:28
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Had a busy weekend, not much progress on the deck due to other plans and weather. Got the lumber delivery  Went on my annual kayaking/camping trip with some friends  Yesterday I got the deck joists taped and way too little scrap wood burnt  I have plans pretty much every day this week and into the weekend, so it's going to be hard getting time to make more progress.
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May 28, 2019 12:48
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Tuesday nights in the dreesemonkey household are "remember to put the trash out" night. I had a bit of a cleanup to do thanks to a visitor the night before: Hi yes, I am here for the party?     Yelp review: Try the buffet! A++++ would root through trash again.
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May 29, 2019 14:23
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FINALLY got a start on the deck. Friday I took a vacation day and spent all day burning scrap and starting the deck. I bought a miter saw stand, this is nice to use. It's still heavy but having it on wheels is awesome.  First post in place  First row  Notching around the first post  End of Friday  Once I had about 4 or 5 rows in place it started to go a little faster, not having to climb over every joist very slowly. At the end of Friday I figured things could go a bit quicker because I could move the miter saw up onto the deck. Actual end to Friday, several drinks in at this point  Unfortunately Saturday we had plans so the whole day was shot, despite the weather being perfect. Sunday morning, the weather was not perfect, but I said gently caress it and set up shop in the rain to put the rest of the posts up.  I only had a couple of hours to work since we had plans again in the afternoon but I got almost as much decking down as I did all of Friday. Having the miter saw stand on the deck was a bit help. You can see I did end up putting railing posts in the area I'm planning to have the grill/grill covering area.  I'm going to have to get some longer 6x6s, my wife's cousin strongly recommended that I run the grill cover supports down to the ground so I probably should do that. I'm trying to figure out if 10' will be long enough or I need to get 12' lengths. Going to try and take off tomorrow to make a bit more progress.
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Jun 3, 2019 15:35
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Had another day off work yesterday and got another chunk of the deck done. I probably could have finished the decking completely but I had to run to lowes and I decided to mow the grass after lunch to give myself a break from physical labor. My son had his last baseball game of the year ("coach pitch") so I was under a time crunch as per usual. The 6x6s were a PITA. I built some captive blocking first so I could slide the 6x6 down into it and only have to worry about it on one plane. The first one did no go very well. When it was sliding into place, it missed the deck block and then kind of jammed itself at an angle on the framing. It's not just the weight (apparently around 120lbs), but also the friction/drag against the captive blocking that was preventing me from just hulking it into place. Eventually, to fix it I had to get my car jack out.  It was at this point I realized the carriage bolts I bought were too short so I had to waste time running back to lowes. I used 10" galvanized carriage bolts (had originally bought 8") and several structural screws. Seems pretty solid. Another angle, both of the 6x6s in place. You can see the deckblocks. I'm very glad I ran these all the way to the ground.  Found a heart-shaped knot in one of the decking boards, I put it down close to where my grill is going to go.  Here were are all cleaned off from this morning. The giant blobs of green are where I spilled the wood preservative, damnit  I've got 3 rows yet to either start or finish. 
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Jun 5, 2019 12:39
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Just want you to know that we're still reading and that is an awesome and huge deck.
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Jun 5, 2019 14:21
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Yes that.
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Jun 5, 2019 14:32
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Are you sealing it at all, or just leaving the pressure treated as-is?
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Jun 6, 2019 00:13
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kawaii af, op
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Jun 6, 2019 10:00
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Rectal Placenta posted:Are you sealing it at all, or just leaving the pressure treated as-is? Yep I'll be staining/sealing. I think you're supposed to wait 1-3 months for the wood to dry a bit before you seal it. I'm going to guess I won't be able to do anything with it until August anyway, we have a pretty busy summer coming up.
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Jun 6, 2019 13:27
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You've achieved a lot there, that's a ton of wood to shift.
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Jun 6, 2019 14:30
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I was off work again yesterday, this time because it was my son's first day of summer vacation. His summer program doesn't start until next week so I took off with him. I'm a proud dad, I took him on his first bike ride that was more than just around a parking lot and he did exceptional. We bought a larger bike for him this year and it's a tiny bit big for him, but he did awesome. We rode for over an hour and he had a blast. The face says it all  I really didn't get much time to work on the deck, I had a work phone conference and had to pick up my daughter from daycare, etc. But I got far enough I had to start looking at the steps. Holy poo poo this is pain in the rear end. Where we moved the steps to, it was going to interfere with the existing concrete landing for the old steps. There was no way I was going to be able to move this so I broke up enough of it to make room  Then I dug this stupid loving hole for literally no reason. I was going to put the gravel in here to use as a base for the large stone paver-things I had laying around in my shed.  Digging a hole was the exact opposite of what I actually needed to do. So that was an excellent use of an hour of my time. This could still use some slight building up, but I was annoyed and running out of daylight anyway. This is a general mockup of what it's going to be like.  I'm not sure why but I'm putting the top step in line with the deck height. The overlap from the last row of decking (I plan on trimming this down to a more uniform width) will allow it to tie it all together kinda nicely, I hope. I also don't really have any plans for doing a railing on the steps. Code-smode. Our old deck never had them, though I will admit it would be nice to have for our aging family members. I could always throw something together if I had to. Great, now I'm second-guessing myself. From the side  I think we're going to get some paver blocks for the landing at the bottom of the steps so I'll need to bring that area up a little bit. Good thing I carted away 5 wheelbarrow loads of dirt I moved from this literal exact spot already. In that last picture you can see I had to go re-aquire some of what I had already moved. You could say that I was not overly thrilled with my progress last night.
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Jun 7, 2019 12:37
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In my experience, your options with projects is either to let them languish indefinitely because you're scared of doing them wrong, or to dive in and inevitably make a few mistakes en route. So hey, at least you're getting stuff done!
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Jun 7, 2019 16:08
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:In my experience, your options with projects is either to let them languish indefinitely because you're scared of doing them wrong, or to dive in and inevitably make a few mistakes en route. So hey, at least you're getting stuff done! Yep, this pretty much sums me up nicely in one statement.
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Jun 7, 2019 19:10
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We have a useable deck! Friday night I moved the grill and smoker back to the deck  I hung some stair stringers  Once the stringers were installed I could put in the last deck board  Didn't take long to finish out the stairs  I grabbed some pavers from underneath our trash and recycling containers to get a temporary landing setup. To celebrate a useable deck I smoked some ribs.  Not pictured, I burnt the rest of the wood scrap I needed to get rid of. After I moved the furniture back onto the deck I realized that I didn't put screws in at all the joints. So I spent some time hating life finishing that. Impact drivers get hot when all you're doing is driving screws non-stop. I'll fully admit, once I got to this point I was ready for a break. Aside from cleaning things up in general, the deck is useable enough for our friend campout weekend in two weeks. Yesterday, we took a family trip to Lowes to pick out the pavers for the landing so weather permitting I'll be working on that at some point this week. Yesterday I also bought a small, used TV. We really don't need another TV. But a while back when I was working on another house project of some sort I was watching football on my iPad and it just wasn't cutting it. I thought that it would be nice, and yes completely frivolous and pathetic, to have a small TV that has a stand (all our TVs are wall mounted) that I can move around easily and chromecast stuff to it. This will be great come football season. Here I am setting up the chromecast yesterday. Unfortunately for me, there was nothing worth putting on the tv yesterday as the F1 race wasn't broadcast live, they picked college baseball to play instead.  Assuming I find some motivation, the next steps will be: - Get the stair landing more useable with the new pavers - Get fascia boards to cover up the old deck framing. - After the fascia boards I'll be able to trim the deck overhang. - Continue cleaning up the yard
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Jun 10, 2019 13:09
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I made another Lowes run after work to pick up fascia/trim/railing related stuff. I spent some time later in the evening adding the pavers we bought to the landing and tried to build up the area a bit with some dirt. I also moved the wood out of the middle of the yard to beside the deck.  Yard cleaned up. Since we have so many trees grass doesn't really grow much back here. I haven't yet mowed it this year but with friend-camp-fest 2019 coming up next weekend I'll get it trimmed up (which will be much easier with everything moved out of the yard).  It was nice to get some stuff checked off the todo list so I rewarded myself with an evening motorcycle ride to a lake near our house. 
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Jun 12, 2019 12:50
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Cool thread and house 
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Jun 13, 2019 21:01
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Although that appeared to be a lot of work I didn't even raise a sweat! 
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Jun 14, 2019 19:16
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Friday I put up some fascia board on the front of the deck. This was quick/easy to do. I also added 1x2 pressure treated trim around all the posts coming out of the deck. I don't especially like the look, but some of the gaps were really big and this was to hide them. I can't imagine these are actually going to hold up well over time with expanding/shrinking being out in the elements, but   While I was working, I found an honest to goodness OJ glove buried under some vegetation. Clearly I'm quite please with myself here.  Saturday/Sunday I didn't do anything else project related, it was my birthday and father day weekend so it was more about gluttony/activities than productivity. This week is going to be non-stop rain, which looks great for our upcoming campout weekend at our house. I expect if I get anything done this week, it will primarily be cleanup in any areas that people may try to hang out in (house/garage/basement).
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Jun 17, 2019 13:20
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In prep for our upcoming camping weekend, I assembled a cheap grill pergola thing I bought on sale a few months ago. I was tempted just to leave it in the box and try and re-sell it, but I wanted the smoker covered for the weekend. I ended up taking the side tables off my grill to have enough room for both of them to fit comfortably under there.  The main takeaway is that I'm glad I'm building the permanent grill cover structure. I don't like the legs of this one sticking out into the deck area, and the extra width will be nice too. If nothing else, it was worth it for the trial run.
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Jun 20, 2019 12:49
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That will be perfect for shading the buffet table.
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Jun 20, 2019 23:50
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peanut posted:That will be perfect for shading the buffet table. It's possible, though I think it might stick out too far from where I'd put it on the deck. Knowing me it will be used until it falls apart and then I remember I was going to build the grill cover out of wood
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Jun 21, 2019 01:02
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I'm roughly through my vacation/traveling time so nothing is happening at home. Last week we were in northern michigan visiting family. They have a lovely lake house and it was a wonderful time. Long friggin' drive, though  We got a decent storm this night, otherwise the weather was beautiful  Tonight we're leaving on our annual beach trip to Ocean City, MD. Then I'll be home another week, and then traveling to Orlando for a week for work. As you can guess, I'm not really interested in starting or finishing any house projects while I'm home a week at a time. Hopefully after I get back from Orlando I'll have some more time to concentrate on finishing the deck and maybe starting some other projects. Our flower beds have been overrun with weeds and grass (like really bad), I'm considering getting a poo poo ton of river stone and being done with it. The only mildly house related thing I've done, and I'm so excited about, is that I finally fixed the water pressure issue in our kitchen sink. I tried many time cleaning out the faucet head with no luck. The culprit was underneath the sink. The line that goes to the faucet head that you can pull out had a small coupler in it. I took the line off and there was a small sediment filter there. It was almost impossible to see, but there was a bunch of sediment stuck in that (hard to see because there was an o-ring in there) and I cleaned it out and the water pressure has been great since. It annoys me, but we had a plumber friend at our house a month ago and he didn't fix it either.
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Jul 19, 2019 12:59
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Between vacations, a work trip, and then several weeks of ear infection / fever type stuff going on, it's a wonder my house it still standing. I'm finally starting to get back into some vague sort of health, so to celebrate this weekend I decided to start working on the permanent grill cover. I did not get very far, BUT now I have a sense of scale. I had to improvise on the one side of the deck  In my initial plans I had guesstimated the size of the roof framing to be 5'. Since I have leftover 2x6x12 lumber, I just cut them in half so now they're 6'. I think it looks good. This is where I left it. I couldn't remember off the top of my head how many roof supports I had originally sketched up and I think I'm going to need to buy some additional lumber for the cross pieces. Here's where I left it  Next steps: - Get some additional lumber (I need to measure to see if I get away with 10' or if I need 12') and hardware - Figure out the spacing of the cross pieces - Determine the best order of operations for getting the roof sections in place. - Buy a bigger ladder so I can actually work on this stuff
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Sep 3, 2019 15:20
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In old person being excited about boring things news, I bought an upright freezer yesterday. I've wanted one for years.  We have a chest freezer(pictured), but we honestly have no idea what food we have in it because it's all piled on top of itself. I don't care if the upright is not as energy efficient. As you can see, I have some room to make in here. The tentative plan is to remove part of the shelving and put the freezer to the right of the support pole, though I've considered removing all the shelving for now and putting it where the chest freezer is currently. I'd have to relocate the motion sensor light switch, but that wouldn't be bad. Might be a better use of space? I'm not sure.  You may not like it, but this is what peak storage room looks like (ok yea I don't like it either)  I spent some time pushing messes around, but I'll have some room to move the freezer tonight after I remove the shelf.  We're going from ~9 cu ft of storage space to ~18 cu ft. Hell yea! 
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Sep 4, 2019 13:18
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You have hit peak dad.
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Sep 4, 2019 15:23
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Coasterphreak posted:You have hit peak dad. Can confirm. I was listening to the new tool album unpacking my freezer and decided against drinking a beer because it was getting late and I didn't want heartburn. That pretty much sums it up. I think I'm about 2 more years before I become full-on @middleclassfancy I did some more reorganizing last night and got stuff moved over to the new freezer, which is code for throw 3/4 of the stuff that was in the old freezer away.  Slow progress, but at least the basement is looking slightly less terrible.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:27
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got to rebuild that shelf to fit bigger freezer
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Sep 9, 2019 16:00
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dreesemonkey posted:Can confirm. I was listening to the new tool album unpacking my freezer and decided against drinking a beer because it was getting late and I didn't want heartburn. That pretty much sums it up. I think I'm about 2 more years before I become full-on @middleclassfancy But then you get to wear your Air Monarchs out to Chili's
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Sep 14, 2019 22:36
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metallicaeg posted:But then you get to wear your Air Monarchs out to Chili's Whoa, they'll let anyone in here huehuehuehuehueh Yea, so I had a lengthy update post with words, which no one cares about, and I must have not submitted it because I'm dumb. I took advantage of the nice weather this weekend to work on some projects. I finished grill cover V1. Bolted the supports together  Added the rafters, they rest on the cross braces and are toe-nailed and secured with hurricane ties  To tie it together I notched the rafters and ran 2x4s across  All done. I went with some sort of vinyl/pvc type roof panels. I wanted to do metal but the roof was a goofy size and it would be a lot more expensive. If this stuff breaks or rips off or something I'll do the metal I guess.  It wouldn't be a dreesemonkey project without my typical nit-picks: - The roof is on crooked - The rafters are not particularly square (Both of these are byproducts of working by myself so it's whatever) - The 6x6s flex more forward/backward than I hoped. It will be fine and I know a second set of vertical supports would have solved this but I didn't want to impede my floor space. I'm not going to be too hard on myself. If I had another person helping I think I could have gotten things a lot more square and/or built it on the ground. If you're not looking too closely at it, it looks great so let's just go with that. Another quick/annoying project I did was replace a downspout that I added at some point. The gutters on the house are not done the greatest, this end of a long run always had water in it. So years back I added a downspout in the most halfassed janky and leaky way possible. I finally got around to fixing it and installing it right.  I have another downspout I'm going to add, but I got the wrong type of elbows so I wasn't able to work on that yesterday. Here's the next upcoming project 
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Sep 23, 2019 15:16
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