Damn, all that work in front of you should be fulfilling...so while you working hard I'll take that vacation you've been thinking about off to Michigan
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My previous house was on a corner lot. Before I put my fence up, I had a couple of contractors doing work for neighbors ask (at least they asked) if they could drive through my bark yard in their trucks. Ummmmmmmmmm.....how about NO???? He tried telling me it wouldn't leave ruts in the yard and I was even more sure to not have ruts in the yard by not having him drive through my yard.

I had a concrete patio poured at that house. They presented the option of pumping it (a good bit of money-maybe up to $1k) and I thought nah, I could deal with it so they pulled into the back yard in the concrete truck. I would have been time/money ahead to pump it than all the hassle I spent getting topsoil, renting a bobcat, and then seeding the hell out of it multiple times.
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Especially when the re-seeding is likely because of all the soil compression. That's what starts crabgrass and such,
you can fill a rut in, but it's never the same unless you dig it all out and break it up and put it all back.
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What the heck? Ya building an ark?
:-)
I stain all the wood before building with it. I like having all sides sealed. I also use end grain sealer on all the cut ends. Stuff called Anchorseal.
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Is it done yet? :-) :-)
It will be really nice after all your work
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I would absolutely love to stain and seal everything on the way up, Lance. With the FIL helping, it just won't happen. I'll have to crawl all under this thing with a sprayer when I'm done to make sure I get everything, including the cut ends.
The deck is free-floating, not anchored to the house, so there will be a little room to get into all the ends. :-)
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The father-in-law is on the way for round two. We got all the trusses done but one on Saturday. I did the next to last one after he left and dropped it on my leg. That's when I decided to quit for the evening. :-)
I'll get a progress pic as soon as I go out there, cause we'll be a lot further ahead at the end of the day.
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Gotta love home improvement projects. Good luck with the rest of the deck and I'm sure will turn out great.
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I'm right there with ya, Larry--put the foundation down this weekend for an 8x13 shed, got a pile of lumber in the backyard as well. Not as big as Scott's though :-)

Good luck, Scott, that's quite a job, I'll be interested to see your progress!
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lets see some new pictures
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Going to be great when finished... I spent this weekend power washing the deck and staining it. Next time it needs staining, its getting ripped up and i'm going with composite!
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I did Ipe. Very strong wood. Very beautiful. You can stain it if you want but it will last just as long anyway, like 50 years. It's like Teak, but not as expensive. The native softwoods are getting lower and lower in quality and my deck was not well suited for the composites they had at the time. They were weak and very strong sunlight eroded them badly. My neighbor has to tighten all the screws down every couple of years as the deck wears away. I think they have solved that problem now. I would put a plastic deck on a rental or spec house without a second thought.
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This is what we did yesterday. We built the last truss this morning and started running all the stringers. That should be done tomorrow and then we're gonna work on the railing and start the decking. We need to put some more infill in for the decking designs and so forth, that'll slow us down.
I didn't get a pic of today's progress cause it was dark, I just now came in.
Anyways, pics of yesterdays progress...

Image

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Good luck, Scott. You'll get plenty of exercise in with this one.:-)
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How many square feet will the deck be? Looks like it'll be pretty nice.
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The support beams look great, how are they going to be attached to the footings? Or is this going to be completely free floating? Huge deck, looks like it's going to be great when done.
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looking good
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Right around 640 sq. ft.

The deck is free floating, which by definition means it's not attached to the house. It's attached to the 8" round-48" deep pilings with hurricane clips. If you don't fasten a deck down, it just amounts to a big airplane that'll fly away in the first windstorm. That'd suck something awful.
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I just came in to take a little fiver. I locked up pretty good and couldn't work my little paws, so I doubled up on my meds and I'm ready to get back out there.
We just finished the last of the stringers (joists) and I'm not sure what our next move is.
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Awesome-mine is probably around 680 sq ft and I hope to finish it before the weekend of the 4th. I'm holding off on putting the posts/rails up next year until I graduate/get back to work and make better use of the $1k it's gonna cost for post covers, skirts, caps, etc. until then. I already have the rails, but I'm not about to put them up over 4x4's only to take them down again to put the post caps, skirts, and covers on.
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