The Deck Part 3: Putting it Back Together

This actually happened back in November, but Bob's lazy and didn't bother writing about it until now. Bob's excuse is that Orsi already hijacked the blog, so why didn't she update it?

As described previously, the deck was attached to the house (right through the siding) which caused leaking and rotting problems. So we removed some boards against the house, dug new postholes, attached the deck to the new posts, and cut it away from the house. Thus, the deck was now freestanding. The next step was to put in the new sliding door and the siding over the deck. With that done, we could finally put the deck back together.

To put things back together, we put a new board across the end against the house. This was positioned very close to the house. This was a little tricky since there was no way to get a hammer or screwdriver between the house and the board to attach it to the ends of the boards. The solution was simple: we used some short scrap boards to attach to the end of the boards perpendicular to the house, and then attached to the parallel board through those, so the screws were going towards the house instead of away:

The upper part of the deck (shown above) has boards that run parallel to the house, so putting those boards back in was simple (although we ended up replacing one of them). The lower part of the deck has boards at an angle. To avoid pulling the entire deck apart, we made a cut parallel to the house, resulting in several short diagonal pieces that had to be put back. To reattach them, we put short pieces parallel to the house in between the perpendicular pieces. These were positioned halfway out of the ends that were still there, and then the old pieces were replaced. Thus, the ends of the boards where they were cut is supported and nothing is just hanging in the air:

We ended up replacing a couple of these pieces, too. Here's what the deck looks like now (the replaced pieces are clearly visible):

 

The next steps are to power wash the deck to remove the existing paint and stain it. Also, the railing is in really bad shape, so we'll replace that, too. Ultimately we'd like to replace the deck entirely, but that's going to be a big expensive project, so I expect that to be many years away (we'd be happy if we could get 10 more years out of this deck).