Up at 5.30 as usual, tools carried out, everything in place, I did start messing around.
Well, the workforce was here before 08.00 as expected from Kevin and Craig.
Relax, walk about site, chat....
Cuppa tea, pi!ss take.
Team selfie while denailing it all.
Yup, most of the nails were still in the framework.
They rust out and loosen boards over time.
Frame out, set aside to reuse in non essential parts.
Itβs obvious that the wood is decent quality, and mostly was really good.
Then started to lay out new frame.
Fresh wood, new wall plate is a good reference point to work from. The house wonβt move.
Actually reused the lightening bolts as they were so good.
Impact driver makes it a doddle once new holes are copied from old wall plate that could in retrospect have been left there.
One observation.....
I had ordered 18 lengths of 2x4 timber at 4.8 meter lengths.
Errrrmmmm..... 4 of them were 4.2 meters, so way short.
DOES ONE COMPLAIN TO THE SELLER, OR JUST LET IT RIDE, BECAUSE SELLERS CANNOT BE BOTHERED??
So we carried on, made a squared, levelled and βperfectβ frame base.
Redesigned part of it, along the hedge, cut back a load of the base of the hedge that had grown into the old deck and was going to cost me 200mm down the side.
Regained.
Another observation and recommendation is to have all the right tools.
Chop saw, circular hand held saw and a jigsaw, plus a hand saw ale make life easier.
5 cordless drills, four chargers, 8 batteries.... and then the rest, crowbars, hammers, loads of screws (no nails in this whole construction, unlike before) three tape measures, four sharp pencils, sharpened through the day, etc etc etc and loads of tea and coffee plus a sense of humour and fun.Adding to the frame.
The old deck had 600mm centres, the new frame at 500mm centres.
Also three times as many legs under the noggins.
At about 14.00 or 2pm we stopped for a quick break, no BBQ as it takes too long.
Back at it.
Every cut needs to be measured and unlike metal where you just weld a bit back on, the cut is final.
Measure, cut, screw, every noggin gets four 80mm screws.
Many of the jobs inside the job needs two sets of hands, or just three, somit was a constant mix n match of tools and the three of us.
All the noggins in.
Pulling it together.
Next job, individual legs, base and supports at every noggin joint.
At this point we added a pair of boards to create the starting point of the lay down for when we had done all the legs.
They took a lot of time too.
I had to go buy some more longs screws as the job had changed so much, increasing the overall integrity of the frame and deck.
Laying the decking boards out to aid planning.
ONE MORE OBSERVATION AND WARNING......
.
THESE BOARDS ARE ALL WARPED IN BOTH PLANES, SO A LOT OF PULLING AND PUSHING HAPPENED.
I HAD DECIDED ON A 5mm SPACING WHICH WAS NOT THAT EASY TO MAINTAIN.
We all kept swapping jobs, which makes a lot of sense as your body prefers the change.
At this point, Kevin and I were screwing boards down, spacing, pushing, pulling, we are talking crowbar to pull a flat board straight.
Craig was cutting boards and also started working on cutting the triangulated section pieces, fiddly, time consuming and of course custom made.
Craig doing the finicky bits.
The last 5.1meter board will have a diagonal cut down itβs full length as despite all our efforts and the fact that there was up to 4mm difference in the board widths.....
YES WTF ??. We just could not get it all taken up.
Small price to pay.
At this point it was 20.00 or 8pm and we were all flagging after 12 hrs out in the cold, and it rained part of the day too.
So we packed up tools, with the rest getting done today by Kevin and I.
Craig lives 80 miles away and has a family too.
Darkness, not our friend.
How we ended.
As someone who very rarely uses a bath, this, along with two rather large pints of Sailor Jerry and Peps Max, and paracetamol and Ibuprofen made for a perfect evening, bed at midnight and up at 05.15 as my body was objecting.....
Looking forward to wrapping this up today.
Still need to build some trestles for the new table.
And then the biggest job, build a tailgate bench to replace the wonky old one I have .
Thanks for looking in.
Brekkie time.
Later.