Last weekend I went down to San Diego with Chloe for four days to help my brother replace their ancient, termite-destroyed deck.  During the demolition, which he took care of before we arrived, he found that some of the framing could be removed with a broom!  Given that their deck sits at the top of a slope and that they have a 1 1/2 year old, the time had come to take care of it.

The old:

Served their useful life

At some point, joists were sistered to the sawed-off ends of other joists

Some of these posts could be ripped apart by hand!

We ended up putting in a solid 80 hours of  labor between the two of us in just 4 days.  It was pretty aggressive, but we needed to make sure that if it wasn’t complete when I left (why do I always delude myself that things will be finished in an arbitrary, unrealistic timeframe?) that the framing and posts had to at least be finished. That would leave smaller projects that could be done piecemeal, as he has time later.  And for the record, this deck is quite large…10′ deep by 34′ wide…a little larger than a weekend project has the right to be.

Without going into all the gory details, most of our problems stemmed from one issue…the concrete footing that held the upper end of the deck wasn’t level.  For about half a day I assumed that it was, since the seriously settled corner of the adjacent patio made the less-seriously settled footing look relatively level.  Once I checked it, though, we found that sloped down just over 2″ in about half the width of the deck (about 16′).  I convinced my brother that we had to make the deck level, regardless of how it looked with the patio, because it would be a nightmare to build a deck that sloped only on one half.   And, of course, it would look like hell and cause lots of other problems down the line when attaching posts, decking, etc.

Given our tight timeframe, we had to deal with the problem in an unorthodox way.  Instead of building a custom form, pouring concrete to level the footing and then having to wait for it to dry, we shimmed that end of our sill plate into position, essentially suspending it in place.  That allowed us to start connecting joists and get going on the rest of the structure.  We went in later and used long anchor bolts to attach the board to the original footing and then packed in new concrete under the board.  While it’s not a technique I’d want to use for building a house, it worked out great for this.  Fortunately, we were able to rotohammer new holes into the existing post footings and attach new post anchors to them.  That saved a lot of time and let us start building much more quickly.

The new:

New posts attached to the old footings

The board on top is level, the concrete is not

Me, attaching the first beam

Beams in place and braced

My brother's wife staining deck boards

A zillion joists installed

Beautiful redwood boards

New and improved structure

See no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil

Posts and a lonely rail

Weaving deck boards into place. The funky dimensions of the deck required a lot of extra cutting to keep the seams looking random

Look at the trim board under the front edge to see how much the patio has sagged

Me, my brother, my sister-in law, my nephew and Chloe

As you can see, we did not end up finishing.  While that was a little disappointing, there’s only so much you can get done in just 4 days.  And we met the goal of getting all the “big stuff” done.  It was also really fun to get to spend a long weekend with my brother and his family.  Most people do not think of this as fun, but it was actually a great time.  Then again, most people don’t have houseblogs, either.  Hmmm…maybe they’re the sane ones?

With many DIY projects, I know just enough to have an unjustified confidence and not enough to know that I’m screwing something up.  I had started installing the playhouse shingles based on my own recollections of how much exposure each shingle was supposed to get.  You have to keep in mind that I’ve never installed a cedar roof before, so these memories might have been based on something I read years ago.  Long enough ago that I had forgotten the important parts.

When I was about 1/3 of the way through the roof, I noticed that the back of the tag had some instructions that just had to be wrong, since they didn’t agree with what I was doing.  They said that each shingle should get no more than 5″ of exposure, but I was setting them with 7 1/2″.  Given that they are about 15-16″ long, that meant the difference between 2 layers and 3 layers.  Since I was careful about my seams and nail spacing, I convinced myself that it just wasn’t necessary to go so overkill on a playhouse.   And besides, who wants to spend more on cedar shingles than they absolutely have to?  The partial roof had already gone through several rains without incident, so I wasn’t too concerned.

Well after getting much more of the roof done today and checking on it after a rain, I now realize I screwed up.  While there are no active leaks, the problem is actually water soaking through the shingles, causing a bunch of them to look like the picture below.  I think this will eventually lead to real leaks, so my plan now is to start pulling up nails and resetting shingles at the correct 5″ spacing.  Not fun all all, but better to do it now than rip it apart or replace it later!

Soaked cedar

Q: what’s better than spending fathers day weekend working on a playhouse

A: nothing!

Birds' eye view

So here’s what was accomplished the last couple of weekends.  As always, it’s piecemeal…a few hours here, a couple there.  One of the design changes we’ve made since the “final” Sketchup design is to extend the front rafters out beyond the roof line.  Also, we switched to 2x8s for the front rafters to both give a more solid look, as well as to have extra depth to allow them to be notched around the lower beams.  Since you really can’t see any of the other rafters from the sides, they really do make the roofline look much more serious.

The cedar shingles look awesome, but they too are not very visible except along the front edge or if you choose to remove an upstairs screen and hang out the window to get a look at them.  With just a little more effort, the playhouse will be dry!   Of course, it’s taken me to the end of the rainy season, so that was bound to happen naturally, anyway

The first few shingles

The first of the larger, notched rafters in the front of the playhouse

The front rafters project out beyond the roofline

More shingles!

Or maybe it was a raccoon, an opossum and a rat.  And it wasn’t in a pub but actually a blue tarp that had been protecting (I use the term loosely) our large stack of stripped down doors until we had time to refinish them.

While doing the annual spring cleaning of our patio, I lifted up said tarp, so that I could relocate the doors, which had been lying across two sawhorses since last summer.  My first thought was that Chloe had picked up a piece of dog poop with something and then put it under the tarp.  That didn’t make sense anyway, but especially not once I grasped the magnitude of the “deposits.”  And once I got over my initial shock, it became clear that at least two different species had been shacking up under our tarp.  I consider myself open-minded, but even I wasn’t comfortable with this type of relationship.

Another possibility is that it was an opossum having a litter of babies on top of our closet door.  I used a scraper and a hose to knock everything off, but as you can see from the picture, there was definitely some damage.  I am hoping that once it’s sanded and refinished with a dark stain, it won’t be too noticeable.  That is not a job I’m looking forward to!

Pre-stained, err...pee-stained

I once again was able to press last year’s scaffolding platforms into service.  By resting them on the 2×6 ties, they turned what would be a monster pain in the ass into a relatively easy project.  As each rafter has gone in, the “floating” beam in the middle moves less and less.  It is really helping to stiffen up the structure.

Work platform #1 in place

8 rafters done!

Today was fairly productive, considering that multiple lumber yard visits were made in the morning.  The overall shape of the playhouse is now apparent, as all the beams are in place.  I tacked on an old piece of decking in lieu of a rafter, so that we could see the roof line.  It is quite exciting to see this come to life.  Ginger, of course, still says it’s not a playhouse (no doors!).

Fresh cedar from Mr. Plywood

A post waiting for a beam

Lower beams in place

Not hard to imagine it anymore!

We went through another round of revisions on the playhouse design recently.  What you can’t see in the rendering are the cedar shingles that we’re going to use for the roof.

The ever-changing design

We decided to make it less modern than our original design.

Technically, this should be called part 29, because it feels like we’ve been here before

Yesterday was our annual we’d-better-get-out-and-cut-down-the-3-foot-tall-weeds-before-they-swallow-children-or-pets event.  As anyone who lives in the Pacific NW knows, springtime makes everything grow like it’s in a jungle.  It makes things very pretty, except in our yard, which is about 90% weeds.

We are committed to some big changes this year, so keep checking in to see it evolve…

The weeds will take back over as soon as we go to sleep

I finally remembered to pick up some concrete, so that I could pour the final footing, in the front right corner of the playhouse.   This hardly warrants its own post, but I just wanted to show that there is actually some progress!

Should stay put!