The last time this blog visited this deck, it looked something like this:

Mark took two weeks off recently. That’s in addition to the week he took off when we painted the outside. He has a ridiculous amount of vacation (that’s one of the reasons we thought we could tackle such an ambitious project).

He spent Week One on the deck while the crew installed sheetrock, taped, and textured inside. He spent Week Two painting indoors, but you’ve already seen that.

Here’s Day One of Deck Work. A lot of prep happened before they laid the first board. Mark wanted a specific type of wood and he didn’t want to see screws. Those stipulations turned a 2-day project into a full week’s worth of work. It was worth it, though. The thing is gorgeous.

Side note: We all have well-earned farmers’ tans now.

In the picture below, Mark shows us how to use the biscuit joiner.

You make a small incision in the side of the board then insert a clip and nailed it to the joist. The board next to it gets an incision too and it’s pushed onto the clip that’s already nailed in. They say a picture is worth a thousand words:

This process is both painful and time consuming, but it results in a surface free of visible screws or nails, which makes Mark happy.

Mini-conference – most likely regarding the length of the next board.

The part of the deck you see in the picture above was easy peasy work. Sure, it was a pain to high step over all those joists – many a shin scar earned here – but compared to working on the section over the water this was a cakewalk.

See, using the ground as leverage to get the boards in tight on the ‘land side’ was good.

Doing the same thing over the water – not so good.

They made their way, slowly but surely.

The Cement Pond god requested sacrifices so we offered up a couple of tools. Not sure what harm he could have inflicted upon us if we chose not to contribute to his cause, but better safe than sorry, right? (I’m really curious to see what turns up when we do a proper draining and cleaning of this thing…at least thirty years, or four feet, of muck in the bottom should make for a fun archaeological dig.)

This little part of the deck was trickier than I ever imagined.

While taking a break from deck work, father-in-law spotted a large soft shell turtle digging a nest on the “lake” side of the property. She spotted him at the same time and her attempt to quickly and gracefully high tail it outta there failed as she slid down the bank and landed on her back in a couple of inches of water. Fortunately, one of the deck planks was long enough for Mark to reach her and flip her over without having to get too close. Since Mark saved her life, I told him he earned naming rights. So everyone, meet Cat the Turtle (or more specifically, Cat the Turtle’s belly – or, if you want the anatomically correct word, her plastron). I’m hopeful this experience didn’t mess up her egg laying process. I plan to keep an eye out for her kittens in a couple of months. Had I been on hand for this li’l adventure, you would see pictures of the rescue itself. Instead, you just get this:

Back to the deck – who knew walking on a solid surface could bring such joy?

Once they attached the trim pieces the next phase of this project started – painting the structural steel to help protect it from the elements and to make it look pretty. Although, if we do our job right it won’t really look pretty, it’ll just disappear.

First we cleaned the metal, then Mark ground down nails used to hold the joists in place then came the primer. This is nasty stuff and I apologized to every minnow that thought a tiny drip was an insect landing on the water.

I have a newfound appreciation of the men and women who paint bridges. This is not easy work.

My arms were too tired to snap an action shot of the final coat of black paint going on, but here’s a good before and after:

Even though it’s nasty stuff, we’re quite happy with Rust-Oleum® industrial strength rusty metal primer – specifically, the way it adhered to the steel. Fingers crossed it holds up well because I do not want to paint this thing again.

But that’s not all!

Work began immediately on the balcony. Fortunately, Mark’s stringent wood and screw requirements didn’t cover the upper deck so this work went remarkably fast.

This is how we worked on the balcony before:

If you look closely at the picture above, you can see father-in-law’s hand while he caulked the board and batten. I took this photo during one of my ‘spells’ – which is just code for taking a break, lying flat on my back and staring up at the sky for a while. I’m not cut out for the work of a day laborer.

This is how it looks today. Yes, railing is planned. We’re not crazy.

It’s so much easier to work out there now!

Here’s the view from another spell.

The team who put the joists in place made a few placement mistakes, so Mark used the grinder to smooth the holes and his dad filled ‘em in with Bondo®. Once I painted the beam with primer, it’s practically impossible to see where they were.

I’m confident it’ll look even better with the final coat of paint. There’s a lot more work to do – most importantly, welding pieces meant to attach the upper balcony railing. We have a special guest star for that job, so check back in a couple of weeks to see how things turn out.

Then we must finish painting the underside of the balcony and stain/seal the wood on top too. Finally, we will sand and oil the ipe on the deck below but that won’t happen until the brick masons finish their work.

In the meantime, I leave you with a picture taken yesterday:

One tiny step at a time.

Neither Rust-Oleum® nor Bondo® sponsored this post but we give ’em both our seal of approval.