Building A Ground Level DECK - (Part 1)

the biggest decision I had to make here was finding the perfect location for the deck the size of this backyard is about 80 feet by 35 feet and a deck is around 16 feet by 12 the plan here is to put this in the center of the yard and I have to remove the fire pit which is in that location and also the bench now there are a couple of ways you can go with prep in the area one you can clean out the grass that's here or you can just kill it using some sort of weed killer but I'll take a different approach here I'm gonna leave the grass as is then I'll place the weed barrier on top of the grass and that should kill and prevent the grass from growing when things can go my way I like super clean and modern design which is why I wanted this deck to have no joints at the top and of course that comes at a cost the materials has to be longer and of course that introduced a lot more weight and a good thing I had a friend of mine to lend me a hand there's a lot of prep work that goes into these projects so let's get started by cutting these boards down to size to speed up the workflow here I set up a quick and simple miter saw station that would allow me to make repeatable cuts which should make this process a little more efficient to give me a better visual we started by laying out a frame of the deck till similar to deck I used three inch deck screws but you can also use joist hangers which is probably a better option but in this case once everything is all assembled and locked together this thing is going to be solid the final product of the deck will have a bit of an angle to it but within that angle there will be a rectangle so I'm going to use one of the joists to properly space this end of the rectangle and now I'll add in a few of the joists at this point the frame of the deck is complete now I will use trex decking on top of this structure and since Trek's is a composite material there's a minimum requirement of 16 inches on center once the deck is lifted I'll come back and add the remaining joist boards this way I can meet the minimum requirement and as I did with the frame I added three screw per joist on each side this is the first time I built a deck or any structure of this size so my approach may or may not be different from anyone else I just thought this way may have been easier by just building the structure and then attaching them to the post and since the plan is to lift this I don't want to add too many of the joists which will make this a bit heavy to lift so this part is quite important I put the deck in a location that I wanted then I took some marking spray then spray water one in each post to be we then move the deck from that location and dug out the hole for each post I'm located in Florida which is a warm climate so we don't experience frost issues however if you live in a cold climate that is a thing you will have to face another thing to think about is if you have a sprinkler system you may want to run it just to make sure you don't have one in the deck location my average post was around 15 and 24 inches deep in the occasion you do just reroute it or just cap it off I also added some gravel in the hole for drainage now I thought it was easier to move the structure and then dig the hole however you can just leave the structure in place and dig the hole around the location that the post will go after dragging the structure back in place we didn't host it up on some 4x4 doing this will make the job a little easier feel working alone now the yard do have a little bit of a slope which allowed water to run away from the house towards the property line with that in mind I reference everything off the front side of the deck before adding any screws I used clamps to hold the frame to the post I started off at one corner and worked my way around the deck until I got the deck level now I spent a lot of time trying to make sure this was right and even though I got it level with the level I still felt unsure because the fence was leaning from the previous hurricane and also the ground had a pitch to it so my eyes was playing tricks on me and I couldn't tell if the deck was leveled or not even though it was showing that it was straight on the level I still had to pull out my laser and that's when I decided that okay it's leveled and although I didn't show it here I constantly check for squaring through this entire process and the way I did so is by measuring diagonally across the deck in the rectangular section if you measure in both direction and come up with the same number this means the deck is square if it's out of square you may just have to push one corner in or pull it out after I got the deck leveled and square with the four corner posts I then went on to adding the posts on the inside now keep in mind all the corner posts are still being held with clamps and no screws at this point am I thinking here is since the deck is in its location I'm gonna try to add stability by working from the inside out at this point the deck is pretty stable saw a mix up some concrete and poured in each post [Music] by the time night came around I put out the level again just to make sure everything was still on point everything was still in tech and it looked like I'm ready to start adding the remaining joists to speed up the joist hanging process and make things a little easier I took a scrap piece of lumber and marked out a location where the joists will sit you can also see that I'm using a scrap piece of 2x4 to also set the spacing this way I don't have to measure everything and although I had help for a good portion of this project I'm so used to working alone I made these quick two-by-four jigs that allow me to hold the joists in place while I screw them in I repeated the same thing over and over again until all the joist was in its place so this is Mario who helped me out with a ton of the heavy lifting on his project and to my knowledge he's never built anything so I gave him a simple task by building this depth to the deck once the frame was built we checked for square in before adding two additional parts I filled in a post with the dirt that was removed from the holes I then compacted dirt within the holes using a piece of lumber now I need to prep the area first step and to make sure I don't do more or less work than I actually need to do I use the marking spray to mark out the area and with the yard being at a slope on e to remove the section of grass and some of the dirt here just so I can get the step to be level now everyone works a bit different much of this could have been done all at once so when you pour the cement it was just all done in one session whenever I can simplify the process that's what I aim for so trying to work on the entire deck at one time I felt like it would be too much to think about so I built this in pieces which would allow me to focus on one thing at a time the backside of the step will be attached to the deck but the front of it will be supported by two posts getting the step to sit properly it took a little while but we needed to make sure that it had the ability to sit straight and level [Music] I secured the back of the step to the deck and then attached the front to the two posts prior to adding two posts I filled the holes with drainage rocks since I need to do some additional work to take throughout today I'll save the cement pore for the back end of the day this way I don't disturb you after it's poured now I could have kept it simple and designed a big rectangle with a simple step on it for me I wanted something a bit cooler to make this connection here I use a six degree angle here then I use a piece of wood under it to hold it as I rest it and do all the prep work as you see what I'm doing here I'm using a clamp to basically force the wood to Bend just so that it can cooperate because the angled face board is cut at an angle all those smaller joist boards are also cut to that same exact angle which allow them to fit in perfectly not only is the angled face attached to the joists but it's also secured to the first step and I don't do that secured to joists from the front but I also secured it from the inside now this part was a little bit tricky to pull off but visually I don't think you'll be able to see the difference but if you want to get even more accurate you could use a string prior to securing this that way you can make adjustment on a flight to the string this wood is not straight to begin with so once I rep relate the deck board you wouldn't even notice it now back at the far end I wanted to add some additional support to make up for the suspended corner the goal here is to have this soda it's not visible when you're standing out looking back at the deck now when you're working with lumber its forever changing not a whole lot you could do there if you notice I have a string wrapped around this section you can see a slight gap in here so what I'm going to do is take a set of clamps and force that out then I add some bridging in between and this should help with the bowing that you see and one sure way to take away two flicks in from the individual joist is by adding the bridging all the way through the deck to finish out the suspended end I use a hand saw to cut that off caryn to angle all the way out to the end when I'm working on projects there are times that I do get stumped on the way I should address something so I continue to do something else and during that time I usually come up with something for this situation I just added a scrap piece of wood that extends that board all the way out to the end using some wood glue and screws now I need to cut this flush to match the side of the deck for this application I think a handsaw works really well [Music] [Music] at this point the structure of the deck is complete all there is to do is to add cement into posts for the step so right now we got the deck completely finished the very next thing we want to do is put on the joist tape and what that's going to do is protect their from not only writing but also it's gonna help extend the life of the joist and the beam itself before I apply the deck tape I made sure I send down the top part of the structure then I cleaned off the sawdust so that nothing prevents the tape from sticking now I must say this has to be the stickiest tape I've ever worked it before so I don't think anything's gonna prevent this from sticking to the wood applying the tape is as straightforward as can be and just like that the deck taping is done in the past I've tried a number of weed barriers and many of those let me down by allowing weeds to come through in this case I'm gonna use a commercial grade weed barrier and I'm still not sure of the result that you're gonna get from it but I'm hoping that this one holds up I pulled out enough weed barrier to go to food distance of the deck this isn't quite necessary but I did start it off by stapling the weed barrier to the deck my first intention was to close off the bottom so no wasps can build a nest underneath or rodents can make it a home I did go away from that idea because I didn't want to restrict airflow from passing under the deck the weed barrier is held to the ground using landscape fabric pins the pins were simple to install after land of fabric it's a simple matter of just pressing a pin down through the fabric and into the ground [Music] [Music] stay tuned for part two I will be finalizing a deck adding the deck boards the fascia boards and also lighting [Music] you

Channel: DIY Creators

Views: 4,579,437

Rating: 4.7457623 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, DIY Creators, Building A DECK, diy deck, build a deck, home improvement, frame a deck, composite deck, outdoor deck, deck builidng beginners, how to build a deck step by step, wood deck, deck framing, deck diy, deck building, how to build a wood deck, how to build a deck frame, ground level deck, floating deck, deck build, how to build a deck

Id: Z6fBHCBYyJY

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 20 2019