On Deck

Deck Progress

I don’t remember taking a whole week to lay decking on any project that we’ve built before. It’s nice to be able to walk on the deck surface at last…and I know the customer is excited about being able to walk on it now.  But we’re following our set process…which is what I’d to throw on a little light on while we're in the middle of this-

We buy lumber directly through our lumber supplier which delivers it directly to our mill shop. I then have the lumber milled to our specifications, stacked with ¾” sticks between each layer about 4’ apart, and placed between each layer of decking. What this does is allow air to get between each layer of decking and dry the wood out slowly. This process takes about 4 to 6 weeks to dry out once the wood is treated. After the lumber is milled and bundled up I have the treatment plant pick up the lumber, treat the lumber to our specifications and then deliver to where we have it stored to dry out. Years of experience have disciplined us to make sure the decking it dried out before installation.

For this project, we had the cedar for the screened porch delivered on Friday…and we start the installation on Monday.  The first thing I’ll do on Monday is cover the screened porch floor with ½” plywood to prevent the porch flooring from mishaps. We’ll then tear off the existing overhang on the house to allow for the roof attachment of the screened porch. Next, we’ll get the porch walls up then start the roof and at least get the rafters up by the end of the day. After the rafters are in place we’ll start the roof decking. Planning is obviously of utmost importance here.  More pictures are coming..

Large Deck and Screened Porch Project

At 1800 square feet, this is probably the largest deck/screened porch combination that Tailor Decks has built to date...named the "Thomas-Black" project after the last names of the owners. Here are a few "before" pictures. We had a demolition expert come in and take out the old structure. It was essentially a concrete patio with brick walls and stairs.  We had always done demolition ourselves…but this has turned into an unusually large project. The old patio was built on top of a wood structure. After the patio was built the builder bricked the house on top of it. This is the first time that I had run across anything quite like this.

After the entire demo was completed, we had to support the brick with temporary wood 4” x 4” post and cross members under the concrete pad that was under the brick.  We put temporary supports then had a brick mason come in to dig and pour a footer against the house walls and build a block wall to support the house brick.

Since then we’ve dug all the footers and framed the structure. This week we started to install all the decking and porch flooring. We had a total of 45 footers to support it all. I’m excited in that we’re using our TailorWood Decking for the deck floor and our TailorWood Porch Flooring for the screened porch. Our plan is to be done Friday with all the flooring.

I will take some more pictures Friday after all the decking is done. It’s difficult to get one picture to show the whole project. I did have a professional photographer come in and get some before pictures. After the project is complete I’ll have him come back and do the after shots…can’t wait to see it. It is going to be awesome!