Winner: Rob and Erin Olson - June 2005

Overview

First off I wanted to thank you for a great product I finished my deck last weekend. It came out beautiful. Everyone I show it to cannot believe that I built it myself. It looks so professional.

It's a multilevel deck. I followed the plans from the web site and it was pretty painless.





Day 1: Thursday

I was undecided on if I should break up the old concrete stoop. After having some "experts" check it out, it was unanimous that I should break them up. They were already starting to crumble and building a deck on top of them might not be the safest option.
Here's the back of the house just after I finished breaking up the old concrete steps. It wasn't that hard to break them up because they were cinder block. They pretty much crumbled when I hit them with the sledge.
Finally we can start the framing portion.
We plan to make this section 12x8. Then we'll step down to a 16x20 ground level section.
Well, I had put the camera down for a while... It took us a little over an hour to frame out the upper section. We were on such a roll that we jumped right into the lower section. I totally forgot to take any pictures.
There's my buddy Mike going to get more blocks from the driveway. By the way, at this point, the temperature was around 90 degrees.

Day 2: Friday

No pics again for a while.
Here we are at the end of the second day. Both sections are framed out, and I have just finished decking the upper portion.
There's a shot of the framed out lower section. If you look closely, you can see the double joists in the middle of the box. When I lay down the decking here, I'm going to divide the deck into two sections. I'll do this by running one long board across. Hopefully, it'll look nice.

The upper deck is approx 34 inches above ground. After I finished putting the decking down, the deck was still a little wobbly. I added cross supports using leftover 2x6's. Once these were added, that baby was rock solid!!!!

There's a pic of the little 4x4 section by the entrance. It should be a good place to store our coolers or perhaps the chair pillows.
I also purchased a gutter extender from Home Depot. I extended the gutter 8 feet away from the house. You can see the pipe running under the joists here.
It tooks us less then 2 hours to frame to top portion, and almost a day and a half to do the lower portion. It was very difficult leveling the blocks when working at ground level.

Day 3: Saturday

It's about 8:30 AM on Sat morning. Today I'm expecting 3 guys to help put down the decking. We should have this baby done in no time!

The crew arrived and we banged out the lower portion in a few short hours. At approx 3pm, I ran to the distributor and made the mistake of buying beers. That pretty much ended the work day! We started putting up the Rail posts for the railings, but it was too HOT and the beer was too COLD!! But, the decking is completed.

Day 4 Sunday

The Railings are Done!!!!!
For the actual railing, I purchased the pre-made ones from home depot. First you screw in a track (which is just lattice trim) and then the railing fits right into it. I used a finishing nailer to fasten it down. I didn't want to see any screws.
My Father came over Sunday afternoon and made the stair stringers for me. That was a little out of my league. Here are the steps from the driveway. He also made steps connecting the two deck levels.
Now I just have to add the finishing touches. These include:
Hiding the Dek-blocks. I plan to use 5/4x6 boards running vertically.
Finishing the railings
Making a box step for the yard entrance
Cleaning up this mess!

Finishing Touches

There are steps connecting the two levels.
I made a wall using 5/4 boards running vertically. It was very easy to do. I just used some scrap wood and made an upper and lower nailer, then cut the boards to length.
There's a shot showing how I made the supports for the outside walls. The 2x6's are toed into the 4x4 supports. I then attached a 2x4 running the length of each section. On top, I just screwed a 2x4 into the joists.
Notice that this one wall is angled.. There was nothing I could do! We didn't move the outside blocks in far enough when we framed out this section. It still looks nice.
All finished!!!
Well, I still have to level that box step. But..I think I can say it's a completed Job!