There was a deck in our backyard, built around a big old maple tree. I suppose it once was a nice deck, but then the tree grew and buckled the deck. Besides, the deck wasn't particularly close to the house, so we (not known for ever going to any trouble) have never used it.
There was a big wind storm last fall, the remnant of a hurricane. It blew down some big limbs off the old maple, which unfortunately fell on the kids' playset. Then there was a big ice storm last winter. Big limbs cracked under the weight of the ice, and fell on what remained of the playset. Thankfully nothing fell on the house. But everytime I looked at that tree I saw a ticking time bomb.
The tree had to go. Which meant the deck had to go first.
Day one of deck demolition. After an hour or two of work, John managed to pry up ONE board.
We figured his lack of success was because we don't own the right tools. So a day and a trip to Lowe's later, he tried again.
That pick-axe ended up being flimsy and not particularly suited for the task, which necessitated yet another trip to Lowe's. I felt quite empowered walking out of the store with the new pick-axe and a crowbar. Deadly weapons, both of them.
Day two's work was thankfully accelerated by Bryan's arrival. I can't believe that he willingly spent his weekend helping us rip up deck boards, but I am grateful beyond words. (Yes, I know I keep saying 'we'. I helped. I, um... handed them hammers and crowbars and stuff. And threw away nails. And hauled a few boards away. Once in a while, I even got to wield a crowbar, just to prove to myself that I have no physical strength whatsoever.)
End of day two and 8 man-hours (and 4 woman-hours) of work: half the boards ripped up.
Why so slow?
Here's why:
Three spiral nails across the width of every 2 X 6 deck board to hold the boards to the joists. Joists spaced one foot apart. The deck was about 15 by 20 feet. You do the math.
Necessary? I suppose if you were building a bomb shelter for spiders...
Another reason why this took so long: we painstakingly removed every nail from the boards and piled them up neatly.
On day three we wised up.
End of day three and 8 more man-hours: Almost done with the deck boards!
Day four: Just John and I working today, for about 2 hours. Ripped up the last few deck boards and removed the joists. Luckily the tree roots had caused some of the brackets holding the joists to the wood underneath to pull out. There were LOTS of brackets.
Day five: John and I and less than two more hours, and we're ALL DONE!
Yes, yes, I know there are still 4 X 4 posts standing.
We suspect (since every single aspect of this deck-building was overkill) those are probably 6 feet deep into the ground and embedded in concrete. We'll just borrow a saw to cut them off at the ground surface and call it good enough.
Stay in school, kids. Manual labor really isn't fun, even if you get to take pictures and blog about it.
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=Laughs=
ReplyDeleteYou and your hubs sound so much like my folks! :) And me, for that matter. Fortunately I married He-Who-Uses-Tools. His People are probably the former owners of the spider bomb shelter. I still remember the day he came to my house, looked at the family tool box (a portable one) and then had me drive him back home for "real tools". Snicker.
The down side is now whenever my mom wants something built, she picks up the phone... ;)
I forgot how much that looks like the deck we had in Minnesota! When we had a similar problem (well, there was buckling, but no imminent danger of death from falling branches) we took the lazy way out and used a reciprocating saw to cut away the offending portions. We seemed to take the lazy way out a lot with that house...
ReplyDeleteI'm reasonably sure my entire HOUSE is not as well-built as that deck. ;)
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