The DECK - Part 2: Removing, Rebuilding & A PARTY!

Here is how naive we were.  We thought we could salvage most of the decking and reuse it for other projects such as outdoor tables and planter boxes.  You know, just have a nice neat pile of lovely weathered cedar to use when we felt like it to make cool things...

...then we started to take the boards off the joists.  As I mentioned before, they mostly shattered into hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces when we removed them.  Now what?

Dumpster, that's what.  Easy as pie.  We realized that removing shattering boards, pulling the nails left in them, and then storing them was a silly little pipe dream.  Pre-dumpster, we thought we'd take the unusable junk to the dump by the truckload.  Clearly we were delusional.  We called and got a 20 yard dumpster dropped in our driveway and promptly filled it in 2 days.   ADDED BONUS:  we were able to toss the remaining railroad ties from our retaining wall project that had been in front of our house since March.

We did save a little bit of decking.  Probably just enough to complete the projects we had imagined.

Unfortunately, there aren't any pictures of the dumpster.  But I think most of us can imagine a rusty yellow metal box filled with shards of 30 year old cedar and rusty nails, right?

Here are some other pictures of the demo process..

Where the support post was.

The lighter stuff in the middle is what is left of the support post after it broke. in. half.

It was at this point we realized that the support beam would need to be replaced.

Blerg. 

So the support beam...  Soul crushing.  We'd thought that we could save most of the deck structure and just lay new decking on top of that.  No way.  Those boards were like sponges, soft and squishy and when you touched them, water would seep out.  So off to Menards and after two exhausting days of rebuilding and reinstalling support beams for our 500 square foot, 12 foot high deck it was done.  No pictures of this process because we were pissed off and tired and needed both hands and both kids to help install those suckers.  

Moving on.  

The spongy joists.  We'd found ants! in the sistered boards that were installed for the decorative chevron pattern which we were ditching.  After we removed the infested boards and had the ants! treated we evaluated which boards needed to go.  There were about 6 or 8 (I can't remember - it's a blur) that we just didn't feel were safe to keep.  We pried them out of their hangers and recut and reinstalled new ones.  Notice how I can casually describe something that took an entire day like it was no big deal.  I guess after rebuilding the entire support structure for the deck, it really wasn't that big of a deal, just more time spent than we thought that's all :)

So I'll leave you with some more pictures.  They are a bit out of order, just like this project.  For days it felt more like a triage situation instead of an organized building project.  But we kept our eyes on the goal and put our heads down and went to work.  

Oh happy day!

New posts ready for action!!

We are slowly getting the last boards off the deck.

Plus, new!  improved!! skirting boards 

Here is where I need to thank Sam for some help.  In addition to assisting with the board removal, he - with his 15 year old indifference to/frustration with the project - discovered that if you hit the deck boards in the middle with a crowbar, they would break in half and then you could get leverage to pry them off.  

Thanks Sam!  You saved us time and helped us find a productive way to channel our increasing frustration with the project.  It was terribly satisfying to smash the crap out of those last boards and watch them disappear.

Those are literally the last 2 boards.
John was about 12 feet off the ground at this point.

But he was able to back into the house and get those last boards off!

I think he put his beer board a little too far away... I'm not sure how he could
reach his beer after he got inside the house :p

Side note.  The picture of John above was Wednesday night.  At dusk.  Here is the funny part.  We were having a party the next day RIGHT AFTER SCHOOL.  That meant that John went to work Thursday (last day of school - YAY!) and had just enough time between coming home from work and people arriving to ice the beer.  

So in the dark after an exhausting evening of board removal, we laid down unsecured planks of new decking and hoped that no one would want to be outside at the party.

Sigh.  What you don't see is all of the people BEHIND me standing on our "deck"!!

At least no one got hurt.  The only time people came inside was to refresh their drinks :)