It's a deck, Jim

When I was 17, it was a very good year. Filled with false confidence, I decided any idiot could build things, so I built my own bookcase. I had 2 tools. A jig saw, and a drill. I based it on the length of wood I found at the hardware store. I built it in the garage, and I was pretty happy with the results. It looked a little on the small side. Then I tried to take it inside, and I realized that it was the largest bookcase conceived by man. The garage made it look small. (Ironically this bookcase now lives in the garage).

Well fast forward 11 years, and I designed my own deck based on wood lengths I found at the hardware store. 16 foot board lengths. Claire commented from our balcony that it appears we have possibly the largest deck in the neighborhood.

That picture shows that I still haven't trimmed my longer joists for the remaining outer "rim joist" or "apron," I'll do that tomorrow. It does look kind of big in relation to the other decks in the neighborhood, but it's smaller than our next door neighbor's.

This picture makes it look smaller.

What do you think? Our deck before was super small, so I'm looking forward to a 220 sq foot deck.

This weekend I got up all the joists (if you're wondering how a lone computer nerd got 16 foot joists 10 feet into the air, sorry, it's an ancient chinese secret), and by tonight all my joist hangers are installed, and most of my trusses are up. I even had time tonight to add a few bridges.

Here are some trusses:

Take a close look at my rim joist...

...No ledger bolts! That's right sports-fans, this deck is 100% free standing, making it way safer than decks attached to the house; house attachments are where most deck failures happen. In order to do this, I had to use 5 3inch wood screws in each joist to secure the inner aprons, and then slide the entire box up against the house. That's 70 screws just for the inner rim-joists.

Here's a closer look at my truss work and the strong ties that hold up the joists. Each tie gets 14 8d nails. That's over 200 nails.

Here's a view with the 6ft ladder included for reference.

Here's one of my lateral trusses, from the side. I used half inch bolts to secure them to the posts. In order to do this I used a 1.5 inch wood cutting bit to cut in a flush cylinder for the bolt.

In case you were wondering what a "bridge" is, here's one:

They help stiffen the structure and ensure the joists are straight. Once I finish the remaining rim joist, bridges and trusses, it'll be time for framing inspection.

I made some more mistakes since last time, such as:

• I fell off the ladder a couple more times.
• I used "strong ties" instead of "hurricane ties." The strong ties are more substantial, and cost more. They're also meant for something else, but they worked anyway.
• I was bragging to Claire that I went the extra mile and treated the notches in my posts. She found a thing in the building code this morning detailing how you have to do that for minimum code requirements.

I'll probably have a whole new list of mistakes after we get a framing inspection done next week.