(part 1 of 2)

In the spring and summer, my “woodworking” projects move outside and they tend to utilize larger pieces of wood. This spring is no exception

Today, I completed phase one of a deck replacement project. For the last month, I have been spending most of my productive time first tearing down then replacing the deck at my daughter Kathleen’s house in the downtown region of Toronto.

Here is a before picture of the deck:

From the North (05-01) -Before work starts choped version -small.JPG

And here is a picture taken earlier today from almost the same perspective:

From the North (06-05) -End of phase one -small.JPG

The tree has been removed and both the fences and the deck have been replaced.

The material stained green on the new deck is pressure treated and the material with a clear stain is cedar.

The footprint of the new deck is almost the same but space has been gained by removing the tree, by reducing the size of the steps, and by replacing the two and a half fences that used to be on the right hand side of the deck with one fence.

Right now there is also extra space because the benches have been removed, but phase two will be to build moveable planters linked with benches so that extra space will go away.

Not shown in the before picture are the two pieces of plywood that I had screwed to the deck where people had fallen through last year. The old deck and fence were both falling to pieces as one can see from the next two pictures.

This joist was at the top of the steps:

The rotten joist at the top of the step -closeup (05-03) -small.JPG

There was a gap of about 3 inches where this post “met” the ground

The middle post on the east side was completely rotted through at the base (05-19) -small.JPG

Raccoons were living under the old deck. I made this much more difficult in the future by building this “anti-critter” fence around the entire perimeter:

Installing the racoon barrier around the perimeter of Kathleen's deck -2 (05-11) -small.JPG

Both the wire and the wood extend into the ditch then the ditch was filled in on both sides with rocks and concrete rubble.