Ow, ow, ow, ow

I spent today working very hard on the back deck project. With the help of my sister-in-law, I made a lot of progress. We finish the temporary re-supports of the deck and cut the main pillars.

And that's when the problems started. See, the idio who build out house was severely inconsistent in what he did well and what he punted on. He also did some very stupid things. See, for the cross-beam support of the floor joists, he toe-nails then on the ends. So it would be a pain to remove them (which was part of the original plan). When I saw that two weeks ago I searched the rest of the support structure to see what other crazy stuff he did. Well, I missed some things. The connection of the pillars to the cross support not only had a carriage bolt (which it's supposed to have), he also nailed them. SoB!

So I tried using the reciprocating saw to cut the nails. I got some of them, but obviously missed some (or he did some other crazy thing). At this point I had already rented the post auger. So I was on the clock. Instead of working through the problem, I cut to the chase and cut the pillars off at the top as well.

Then came digging out the remnants of the wood posts from the soil. Okay, 9' of wood on top so I thought there would only be about a foot below grade. Nope, apparently he decided to splurge for the 4x6x12 beams. So I drug down two and a half feet before I could loosen them up to pull them out. So that took us down to out 3 feet, a little deeper. Then we got the auger out to finish the holes to 4 feet (frost line).

But, he put some concrete below the wood pillars. The auger just kinda loosened up the dirt for us. Argh!

Took the auger back to the rental place and cleared out the rest of the dirt. Then, making adjustments for plum and level put in the cement tubes, filled with cement (colored cement, btw) and set bolts. So now we wait for at least 5 days to full strength before setting up the new permanent supports.

In the mean time I need to figure out if I can get the 4x6s out of the cross supports or if I need to just redo the whole damn thing.

Like I said, The builder skimped on so much and screwed up other things (the reason why I need to do this is he then poured the cement pad out our back door right up against the wood posts, which started rotting them out - the wood below the cement was fine) and then on the things I would think he would have done this, instead he went the whole way. Wish he would have done that for the upstarts plumbing and fixtures (downstair half bath is fabulous, upstairs full baths, not so much).

Thanks to my sister-in-law we got all the cement poured. So that was great (as I expected to finish up tomorrow). But I'm going to hurt. Yes, there are pictures, but they're on the good camera so it'll take a little more to process.

How's your weekend going?