Nature

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Building a little deck for a little house

In this post I will describe some of the work we did while building a 10′ x 10′ deck for the little house on the hill.

Because the house is on a rather steep hill, even getting to the front door was a challenge.  Having a nice deck to sit on goes a long way to making it a wonderful little spot to spend time.

It all started with digging post holes.  Rocky soil, on a hill, with hand tools makes for a lot of work.  Once dug down to 2-3′, we fixed them in place with Fast Set cement.  Poured it in dry and dumped some water on it.  Super convenient.

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Once the posts were in place, we leveled and screwed on a frame made of 2×10 and 2×8 treated lumber.

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Keeping the workplace neat.

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Working into the evening on the framing.  Having 3 surefire flashlights handy makes this possible, even convenient.

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Because much of the deck load will rest on the front member, and even more so because groups of people tend to converge at a railing, we made this from doubled 2×10 lumber.

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Here we are installing the decking.  Rather than going with standard decking lumber (5/4″), we opted to go with 2×8 lumber.  It was only a few percent more expensive, and far stiffer.

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Good workers hard at work.

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We used a hand-saw to cut notches out of the end of the 2×8 flooring lumber where it (would have) contacted the 4×4 upright posts.  We live in a culture that thinks “power tools” for most things, but sometimes the hand-tools are the best for the job.

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A close up of the hand-saw approaching the end of the line.

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Notice that Eli (center) has hearing and eye protection?  This is because he was running the impact driver installing all of the screws in the decking.  There were hundreds and hundreds of screws to install.

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Here is a view up the hill.

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A very clear but warm day.

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We made the railing with 2×6 lumber.  The top part of the railing had a 2×6 on the face of the upright supports as well as a 2×6 cap on top.  This resulted in a very strong (up/down and forward/back) railing that is convenient for setting drinks, etc… on.

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For this project we elected to use Torx head exterior screws.  Coupled with a Dewalt 20v max impact driver, the 3″ screws made their way through treated lumber like a hot knife through soft butter.

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Wrapping up.  Just need to finish screwing the decking down and add the top-plate to the railing.

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The view out the front door.  Nice.

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Spiders and bees and really small toads?

This photograph is of what appears to be a very small toad.  The item beside it is a 1/2″ diameter section of rebar, making this little critter about 1/16″ long.  I barely saw him.

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This bee appeared to be out it the cold a bit too long and was pretty sluggish.  This is taken on the back of by glove.

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Here is a daddy long leg in the garden, running as fast as he could.

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Restoring a Driveway

As part of an utility easement I negotiated with an adjacent property owner, we agreed that I would improve his driveway using fill from my property.

This took hundreds (if not thousands) of tons of dirt and rock to complete.  Nice!

Another excellent project completed by Simondale Excavating from Tyrone, PA.

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

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Black and White vs. Color (A buck in the woods)

I was driving up our raised driveway and Ezra exclaimed “There is a DEER!”.  We’ve been seeing quite a few deer (both buck and doe) around the creek recently.

Take a close look at the first photo and see if you can spot him?

Then take a look at the exact same photo in color.  Amazing.

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Two birds and an egg

We’ve been watching this bird’s nest for some time in our shed which is in construction.  The mother, would always fly around the clearing watching and waiting…  Maybe having a panic attack?

The little ones finally came.  Sadly, the third egg never hatched.  A few days later, the nest was empty (except the 1 egg).  Little birds are a bit ugly I must say, but I’m sure the will pretty up in a short amount of time.