How to Build a Simple Deck

all right guys welcome back to another episode on the abandoned house transformation and in today's episode I never thought I'd be saying this but we're actually done inside this house it's come a really long way but what are we doing out here well I think you probably already know we're going to start working on some curb appeal here no matter how pretty it looks it still needs some love and when you're seeing this you're probably going to notice that there's something out of sequins cuz we got new windows that are coming in this next week and by the time this video comes out who knows how it's going to look but there's a few things I want to do here number one we need to rip out all this weed infested number two is I want to build out this deck put some columns up a lot of bushes and Greenery all that stuff to make this house pop a lot of landscaping stuff a lot of a lot of stuff that really are the bells and whistles that are really going to attract somebody to want this house so first order business let's scrape all this [Music] off like AE we're playing big big toys today uh my friend's over at Tate's r were really nice enough to help me uh with this project they hooked me up with this mini skits steer I wasn't too sure if I need the big skitser but they said this should be just fine the idea here is just going to start working in whichever direction we can and start dumping in the back which didn't really think that through did I let's start tearing stuff [Music] it's a lot harder than I thought it would be [Music] body I think I'm kind of getting it it's like you got to you got to push and then lift and then push and lift so push and then lift huh I think I'm kind of getting the groove of [Music] it I don't like doing that next to my truck's wheels so close with my luck I'll destroy something and I'll be expensive [Music] you I'll be back home soon when the sun when the [Music] sun oh that's a good load right there that's a solid load right [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm getting the hang of it uh the controls are kind of interesting cuz you're controlling each track at a time like typically would it's a lot of like video Gam stuff right you got you know just efficient use of the Hydraulics with your you know dexterity but the hardest part here is really knowing how much to lower that bucket like you don't know you can't see oh okay well I'll just follow this line cuz there's no level gauge on it there's no way to kind of see it so you're kind of roughing it creating this little skid part uh but I'm sure with all my research that I did is you know there's rough grading and then there's finish grading so we'll be able to clean the sucker off pi and span am guys we need to start taking better cares of our lawn and that is why the sponsors of today's video is Sunday Sunday is a lawn care plan with simple friendly power ful ingredients backed by Nature No harsh chemicals no unwanted chemicals ingredients you can 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plans [Music] this section's a lot harder because I kept riding over and over on it so it just kind of compacted it together so now it's it's going to give it some muscle [Music] so just green lever all the way down and just back and forth back and forth yeah gotcha that's a lot easier thanks man so my next door neighbor who owns a landscaping company just came up and gave me some pointers what he said is uh these things have what's called a float setting so you basically adjust your uh bucket exactly flush with the ground like that you're happy with and then you press this lever all the way down and it keeps it there and so you basically at that point start jamming the bucket into the sections around breaking up the ground and then you can just scoop it up so that's so much easier than actually scooping each section like we've been doing so far I just wish it came earlier [Music] all right guys got everything excavated here it was a really really muddy day this especially the second day as you can see it's not even leveled the other side's a lot better but this side is trash but we got the ground moved let's get us a deck build so curb appeal um as you can see there's not much of an entrance here it really is kind of boring so I want to kind of give it a little bit of grandness to the front I got to get a better like terminology list so I could use it in these videos but what I'm thinking is I'm going to take this little platform and extend it to about here and what I think will happen is we'll have a floating deck we're going to use TRX decking by the way so it's like weather resistant uh come out and then we're going to have like a wraparound step section all the way around so therefore when you're taking this walkway you'll have something to step on when you're coming from the front you'll have something to step on and on top of it I want to put two big posts right here that will kind of dress this area up that comes the hard part we got to pour our footings the reason why we got to pour footings is yes some people would take those concrete blocks and put them on the ground but the problem is is that it'll work for a season or two maybe even three but the ground does what the ground wants to do So eventually it'll start settling it'll start moving so what we have to do is we have to set our anchor post past the frost line on both areas put the concrete put the forms in uh well actually in reverse order put the forms in put the concrete to put the anchors in and then we can build our deck out first thing we need to do is figure out how far from the house we need it put our stakes in make sure the thing is square and then we can start [Music] digging and I bought a special tool that is perfect for this so it's a little level for your string so we could just get this nice and tight hanging on there and it'll tell us which way we need to go pretty dead [Music] [Applause] nuts in order to get the right Square for it you don't measure side to side you measure across so from corner to corner we're about 2002 uh I think I'm feeling good about it with fun about this uh that I just realized is because the elevation is so low to this curb here I don't even think we're have to put steps I think this will be enough of a step forward just my luck I'm hitting a tree stump I got a bunch of roots coming through here so I'm sure it's just a rout there now we're cooking oh we're cooking now if I can give you one piece of wisdom whether it's this spring this summer this fall and you're going to be do some yard work and you need to put some fence up post up maybe plant some trees get yourself an auger I swear even though I had some problems on the first hole cuz of the roots all three holes got done in what 8 minutes this is awesome this is awesome oh this is awesome got a dug down pass the frostline I'm going to cut these out make a final leveling cuz I got to make sure these are sitting just the right level for the anchors to go in and I think we'll be ready to start pouring our concrete this damn tree trunk this damn branch is sticking through right in the middle all right we're going to throw in some rocks for drainage reason why you don't want to have water pull up at the bottom of this thing and start lifting your footings out so this creates a little drainage around should be good our footing get our level [Music] was good most important part here is making sure that anchor is leveled here and we're going to run a string across to make sure that it lines up with that area on the back cuz we don't want this thing to be all scattered and sted staggered we don't want it to be staggered on us oh all right so we have a nice tight string going from the back of the bracket so this will ensure that when we put our boards running across it's not going to be staggered or swaying any direction so nice straight line or equal distances within an e of an inch away from the building which is fan freaking tastic and last and foremost we are making sure our footing is balanced right there okay I got one more pour I'll save you guys the hassle of watching me let it dry overnight and we'll be ready to Boogie the anchors are all dry we got our lumber here pressure treated 2x8 the idea is going to be to Anchor this thing with these beefy lag bolts into the footing of the house the plan is to keep the same plane as this concrete slab once it's anchored we'll attach our post and then we'll find our our level my concrete footing here is 7 and 5/8 which is plenty of room because my board is 7 and A4 but I have this tiny little corner here that it drops down to 7 and A4 maybe a little bit less that's why it's tight so I need to make a little small chisel from this concrete walkway so this sucker could sit flush [Music] underneath yep that's the one looking good [Music] I don't have a favorite tool CU I don't believe in plain favorites like your children same goes for tools but the SDS hammer drill has to be my favorite because there's nothing worse than trying to drill through concrete with crappy equipment and a solid SDS hammer drill with a solid bit it's just music to my ears I think I got trigger happy and I use my impact to speed up the process but what ends up happening is it doesn't have the opportunity for the thing to pressurize itself so when these go in you tighten it a little bit and then this starts expanding and that's how it stays through and so I I screwed one and I have to do another one now so don't get as excited as I am [Music] the hardest part is done and it wasn't so hard using the SDS hammer drill it's man super fast now the next part is we have to take a 4x4 post it's also pressure treated I'm going to cut it into I don't know 3ft sections set them all in place and then we'll be able to start running our outside pieces to make sure it's leveled with its existing patio deck so this will allow for us to kind of temporarily secure and then fully secure when we're ready so your boy done uh screwed up uh picked up Lumber got really excited I was like man I got all my supplies the day is going to be rocking uh turns out I was an idiot and bu 2x 10s not 2x8s so I had to run back and get 2x8s and now I just have a big ass truckload worth of pressure treated lumber that I'm going to start a little Farmers Market [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I think that's perfect dang that's a nice clean cut too [Music] now that we got the sucker leveled it's sturdy it's Square question is with these post we technically don't need them anymore we cut them off and then we have a nice flat platform there's a small little voice in the back of my mind like well what if we put a little wraparound Port seating in here I think I'm going to cut it off I think it's going to create more of an open space we don't need to close it but if you have any objections leave me a comment down below I'd love to hear wapt around seating would be nice but nice open inviting area would be killer too so stack between a rock and hard [Music] place the fun begins we're going to space these 16 on Center going forward I know that on this section and this section there's going to have to be another notch like I did there to make it lay flat uh I think I'm going to do the section dead last so we're going to start our 16 on Center from the back here work our way up do a little bit cutting slicing dicing and finish her [Music] off we got our framing all done and finished these are the posts that I was thinking about they're basically raw dogless fur but I'm going to wrap them for you know Beauty and all that stuff with whatever kind of pretty wood before we start laying our decking we need to fix this thing in now this thing is not going to be load bearing it's more like almost like a banister thing so what I'll do is I'll cut a hole in here a square hole hopefully I don't hit my rafter and then I'll block it out here attaching it to the deck so therefore because we're past the frost line it won't move and because it's not supporting the amp there it's not going to move and then I'll have time I'll climb into the attic and I'll block it off against the rafters as well so it doesn't wobble on [Music] us H close but there's a supporting beam right here running across so we need to move it 3/4 in that way and I'll have to conceal that when I block this thing off but so far so far so [Music] good I'm a little concerned that it's on the outside of this thing uh I'll have to level it secure it and I think we'll be able to move on doesn't this give it like a more welcoming kind of feel I feel like there's now like an entrance kind of I don't know setup this is I think this is a good call I I'm really happy how this turned out it almost kind of encloses the section so we got TX deck we went creme Dill creme on this so it's $35 uh board 16ft board uh I needed 28 of them so I paid almost $1,000 now why they're great is a couple of reasons the way you secure see these little slots there's Little Hardware you buy that allows for you to have hidden screws so you don't see them in the decking that's number one number two you don't have to sand and stain this thing every two years so it's just one buy once cry once kind of thing and boy are we crying so there's a few things we need to do before we start willy-nilly throwing a boards on which believe me I really want to start doing we're going to do our skirt around because our top is going to overlap it by I don't know I'll give it about maybe half an inch uh we're doing miters on the sides just cuz I don't want to see these ugly butt joints exposed as you could see they have a little Contour in the middle of it so two more miters will SL slapped on there'll be one more step and I'll show you that in a minute [Music] miters are looking good so here's the next step we need a prep we got to create our little border around because we can run their boards but again they're going to be exposed in the side so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a board across here miter it here run it and wrap it around once it's ran and wrapped then we can start filling in all of our pieces although I think now that I'm speaking out loud and trying to catch my breath we're not going to wrap that side quite yet because that side we're gon to get nice clean cut and then put the finishing cap on because that's the Instagram reels that I've seen done so I spaced out now as we're going to wrap this thing around there's nowhere if I didn't have these blocks in here the piece that's framed out won't have enough strength so just kind of Falls in there as soon as you step in it so if you want to avoid that just put another uh board running long I don't have any long one so I'm just going to block it out 16 on Center and that will have adequate support but man make sure you catch yourself on moments like this cuz I was getting really excited start busting these Boards out but got to slow [Music] down I've been tinkering around with this thing left and right try to get my miter straight and just in case something is off uh I think I'm finally there these outskirts are just temporarily secured in case I need to make any micro adjustments these are long boards so they could sway left and right so you're going have to push and pull so going forward now this is my corner I'm going to Gap them all perfectly on this side and run them all that way and then once we get there we'll just make a nice crisp line and just chop it off with the miter saw well nope not a MIT saww a tracksaw [Music] so you're probably wondering the hardware that I'm using here these are from Home Depot these are fiber fiber on Armor Guard deck screws and they're kind of slick so they come in uh preset spacer little bracket metal and then screw comes with a little what they call it a never miss jig thing and this black piece sits in the little Groove that's in here connecting both of them together so you don't get on these wavy lines and press them both together and then this is a little spacer jig so you never really miss your screw your your drill bits never going to snap off here and then damage your deck so that's kind of slick um it all gets kind of pricey in the end so you're probably paying what 40 50 bucks a box and you need a few boxes but if we're going to spend so much money on this kind of TR deack you might as well go all the way [Music] right if you're trying to shave a few shekels on your budget for building uh pressure treated stuff is pricey and it is the the kind of gold standard to go with When You're Building outdoor stuff like that but you can get away with using stuff like Douglas fur as long as you I don't know prevent any kind of moisture buildup one of them is uh first of all you can't have them laying on the ground like this so you'll have to put that you know uh weather treating kind of paste on it but number two is you'd have to put a flashing on top of these boards uh your floor joist and then you put your deck in material over it reason why is because when water drips down it seeps underneath here and it'll stay there and as it stays there it going to start rottening your wood so there's ways avoiding it but most of the time when you're going to save money on it by doing a cheaper way you're going to have to pay for it with time cuz you're going to prep it with a different step [Music] [Applause] [Music] First Impressions I really like this Hardware kit for the decks honestly I'm not just saying that I'm not sponsored by them they're just very convenient I haven't missed a single screw on it you can't see the screws on top except for the perimeter where we're securing the frame so 10 out of 10 highly recommend them in fact if you didn't want to use your little clips that sit on the joist maybe cuz you got a butt joint you can simply just put it like that tap the screw in a little bit and it'll St in place so won't go anywhere not too shabby so what we got going on next next here is we got to pry the flooring here off uh these are planks that are running through the house so I just use my multi- oscillating tool cut my perimeter out and then we're going to pry these off these are really going to come handy when I break them off cuz there's concrete there in some parts and then we'll continue this pattern all the way through [Music] so no matter how difficult and frustrating working on a six-year-old house could be there's some little bit of like a historical lesson you kind of learn so this piece of concrete right here this is the footing of the house right it's going along the entire way and these are the floor joist and the way they did it before is they would almost it looks like they would just pour the concrete around the floor joy so they would pour the footings and then P pour like an additional what looks like I don't know 8 in 10 in of concrete to secure them side to side I can't imagine ever having to replace one how much frustrating that would…