Posts By John Petersik

Alternate punny post title: Joist to the world. (I’ll pause while you golf clap) Good news! My dad made it back from my grandma’s house in West Virginia so operation double-up the girders and bolt them to the posts was able to commence with him at my side. As I started to tell my dad “Okay, you’re going to hold the board in place in the air while I drill pilot holes…” he cut me off and suggested we just put both girder boards on the ground, nail them together and that way they’d both rest on the notched posts – no air-hold required. Smart. I knew there was a reason I picked him as

With my deck holes dug and officially blessed by the county inspection office it was now time to – well – fill them in. There must be some irony in there somewhere, right? As I had done when setting my fence posts last year, I started off by putting a couple of inches of rocks in the bottom for drainage since the deck experts in our area unanimously recommended it under the concrete that we’ll be pouring to hold the posts in place (we dug the holes at least 21″ deep, so that by adding 2-3 inches of gravel at the bottom, they still met the 18″ required depth for our county). Imagine my surprise

If at first you don’t succeed… dig more holes. At least, that’s what was on my agenda after failing our first deck footing inspection (this post explains that debacle). This project definitely isn’t moving along at the speed of lightning, but we’re creeping slowly towards the goal of a finished deck to enjoy family meals on by the end of the summer – maybe even by this time next month if we’re lucky. But remember this speed bump? Since our original plan got the big ix-nay because we were trying to attach ledger boards to unapproved surfaces (although it was initially approved by the county), our new plan required us to make it a free-standing