Decking progress July 18, 2011

Here is the completed east side deck. I finished this before I went into the mountains on the 15th. I started the front deck on the afternoon of the 17th. It looked like I would run out of 2 X 6's. I pulled the extra 16 ft 2 X 6's from the loft that were left over from last year. I purchased 18 more 12 ft 2 X 6's this morning. This should complete the decking.

As I was putting down the decking today I realized I was going to run out of deck screws again. I will need to purchase at least 8 more pounds of screws in the morning if I want to complete the decking tomorrow.

The front deck is coming along very well. Once we are done with the decking, I will install the light cans over the deck and then install the soffits over the deck on both sides.

I should have enough tongue and groove (T&G) boards to complete the soffits. About a third of the T&G I have on hand have been stained and are ready to be installed. Other than a slight problem with the east side TGI's, the soffits should go very fast.

I still have not made up my mind on the color of the siding for the end gables and the dormers. Help!

Deck in progress july 10, 2011

Here is the deck after the second day of installation. I went into the mountains today on dirt bikes with my cousin so I did not start work until 5 PM. I have a little over 50% of the decking completed on this (east) side. I have lost my hired help for the next three days so I will start the west side tomorrow. Scribing around the logs is the most time consuming so I will get this completed before Jimmy returns on Thursday.

Jimmy has been doing an excellent job cutting the deck boards to length, routing the ends and staining them. When he comes back I will be training him to screw the deck boards down. I found out today that I can easily cut the boards to length using my portable circle saw, which will eliminate a lot of extra handling of the boards.