Blue Mountains Deck

Allo,

Our neighbour's deck was in a sad state. Weather and age had reduced it's usefulness to nil and was fast becoming unsafe to stand on. For someone who loves being outside more than in, she was far from happy. The build took longer than we'd hoped, since we could only build on weekends (Andy works down in the city during the week).

It's almost done. Just fascia, flashing and a few finishing touches.
I'm rather proud of my skew :) I was on apprentice and cleanup duty. I'm the Chopsaw Queen!

Northern box decking/stiles, Amperlite polycarb roofing and we think it's Messmate for everything else.

WOW!! It looks like a "rework/Rebuild" job. Katoomba's climate is not friendly to timber outdoors. Did you have a few surprises as to how far back you had to start the rebuild? It would be one of those jobs that soak up a lot of time and money.
After the job are you and Skew still talking to each other?:U

I knew a really lovely old bloke who did a lot of building around Nowendoc (In the Walcha area) The altitude would be about the same as Katoomba and so is the weather. He built, over his time, many houses using hand tools because there was no power connected. He would work all day outside no matter what the weather through at him. If he didn't he wouldn't have survived because you could have 4 seasons in a day and that happened often. He would put on a rain coat and keep going.....I'd reckon any job in Katoomba would have similar weather experiences

Good neighbours are worth there weight in gold and that's a gold winning structure...well done to both of you...cheers, crowie

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chambezio

Did you have a few surprises as to how far back you had to start the rebuild?
After the job are you and Skew still talking to each other?[IMG]file:///C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.gif[/IMG]
[...]I'd reckon any job in Katoomba would have similar weather experiences

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The only bits of the original deck left are 3 of the 4 posts, the stairs and one cross brace. Even now Skew looks at the cross brace with regret, but we wanted to keep costs down. It would have been very expensive to replace and it was surprisingly sound. Everything else was so rotten all the weight was in water.

We got along surprisingly well! We had a few heated discussions in the beginning. I had difficulty understanding the vision he had in mind while he had difficulty trying to describe structure building to someone who barely knows which way round to hold a hammer. I got hung up on things that were trivial. But it all worked out.

The weather has been gracious, a cold but relatively dry winter up here. To be honest there're 2 pictures of me on the chop saw, but I'm wearing upwards of 4 layers at the time (including 2 hooded jumpers one inside the other). My vain side refused to post pictures where I look like the Michelin man.

Cost in the end, including labour is about $6000 (we charged for Skew's time but not really for mine). I turned all the old wood into firewood saving on tip fees and spent about 4 days getting quotes from timber mills and building suppliers. Shopping around made all the difference.

Wanna laugh?
See the little stack of wood under the deck, beside the ladders and behind the post. That's the old deck.
I've doubled the size of that stack, but that's it. That's all of the wood from the old deck; joists, post, decking and fascia.
The previous builder seemed to think that nails were what made a structure strong.

Hi Skew's Girl

I may be not seeing what is there, but I can't see any side to side bracing (can't recall its proper name) between the joists