Easiest Deck Build Ever | Step By Step

hey guys Jeff here today we are at our backyard Oasis deck build project for step number one which is this we're building box frames and we're going to put in the entire structure of the deck today we're going to go step by step how you can do this yourself because this system is crazy DIY friendly and it's really merciful for first time Builders let's jump right into this the deck we're building here is about 400 square feet okay so just realistic expectation in one day you should be able to set up all of your box frame and all of your floral joist package okay which is important because when you're all finished you're going to want to take all of your finished deck boards and store them on top of that because well if you live in the North you know what happens if you get sun and rain the next day and so on and so forth the weather's always changing having the grid the whole floor package built gives you a place to store your wood on a flat level surface so you can strap it all together and maintain your board so they're not going to get Warped in time rule number one when you're putting in a deck is got to get rid of the Organics we're talking about grass and all that black Earth the reason that's so crucial is because in in a Four Season climate like where we're in that stuff is going to rot and gonna break down and so whatever your deck level is is going to be very varying according to how much Organics are there and the degree of decomposition if you remove them then you have some stability greetings here um just to create a flat surface in the bottom of the hole so we can set the block this enables the block to go in somewhat level with really good contact with the ground there's two ways you can set your blocks you can set it on the ground after you remove the the grass or you can dig it into the hole so you can get the deck closer to the ground remember when you're doing a floating deck we've got code requirements we can only go 24 inches off the ground at any point on the deck so what we're doing on this side which is the high side of the ground we're putting the block right in the Earth okay that way when we get to the other side it's raised up and we're not going to exceed our height requirement here we go okay and this next step uh it's just some small half inch gravel it's clean Stone the idea here is when you dig a hole sometimes it's especially when you're getting started you can find rocks and have to move your hole and make it bigger or whatever have some gravel to backfill once you put your landscape cloth on you won't see the holes it's kind of dangerous walking around so just use this just to create a nice safe place to be working there's no drainage benefit or anything like that here this is just making sure that when you're working you're not going to throw your ankle that's all there is to it Next Step grab yourself some landscape cloth do a nice overlap like eight inches cover up the area where we're working with these great little pins once you've got your ground all covered up we can start building our box beams now when it comes to spacing it's really kind of simple what we're going to work with is wanting to make everything Square so for instance this these beams over here these are the first two we set them up so that they're eight feet apart the goal here is to have the second set of the structure resting on this which translates all the load into the post into the block on the ground right so we're going to have a ridge we're going to nail it all together and want all these joists to have resting on the box beam okay nice and simple so really when you're doing this you're setting up your layout start from the middle okay find something measure off from the house the same distance this type of system is incredibly merciful because you don't have to put the block at the very end you've all seen the decks where the deck blocks are exposed and they're cutting the skirt around the concrete block always looks like garbage if you do it this way you can recess this because you can can a lever using two by tens almost two feet after the block okay it gives you a lot more flexibility it lets you work inside the confines of the perimeter so that you can make adjustments and you aren't going to have ugly things to do with later so as long as your floor joists are on top of the two by tens we're going to be fine that's how you do your layout I'll show you this they're a little unstable right out of the gate right so the first thing we're going to do is I'm going to show you a trick to stabilize all the beams all right and then we can get the right measurements to continue building and that is to take one of these two by Eights and run it across the entire deck we're going to roll it over and screw it to the face and that will set up our depth that way everything is square down and dirty here all right foreign have to be perfectly level it's just to set up like an end stop for the deck now we know where the deck ends right here so we're going to cut a couple of blocks we're going to set those in attach the beam butt up against this board so now we know we can keep Square brilliant little system and you can make adjustments as you go along right now I need to cut myself some wood now next step with the 4x4 blocks when you cut anything structural like this is going to go below grade especially but generally any major structural component you can see here this is the pressure trading that penetrated the wood okay didn't penetrate very good on the other sides so when you cut it although the surface is nicely treated now the uncut is completely exposed cut and seal is like a sealant it's a surface penetrating sealer for the wood to provide protection take the cut and sealed end down inside the block now it's unstable but it's still going to transfer load fantastic now we're going to add the two pieces to the side here we go now just to keep everybody straight with the lumber this is a two by ten two by ten is used in construction in homes and can span distances up to 16 feet okay it's a 16 foot long board so when we put the post inside a foot or so you actually have more structure than you have in your house so there's no question whether or not this can carry the load all right the only question is can you put it up in position and get it level all by yourself that's a trick this is my 2x8 that's attached to my other two boxes it's going to be what we're going to call our preliminary level okay because we're dealing with wood you never really know so make sure that your crown is up and that basically makes sure the board if it has a warp to it that is Warped like a rainbow it'll perform better for you over time set a screw set your depth which is up against this we're going to lift this up and what I'm calling this is temporary level because we're just trying to get close all right now because my screw is so far from the board I wanted this end up just a little bit higher okay now that's my temporary level now I'm going to go to the other side I'm going to use an actual level on a 2x8 to get my right height set my screw in advance this is my Straight board that I'm going to put my level on you don't have to have a 12 foot level when you're working with my one hand I'm going to raise the 2x10 until the level is in the right spot okay that is where the money is and I'm throwing another one just to make sure it's not slipping around you'll see how far the end dropped so now we're going to do is we're going to adjust this end so now we're going to lift this up flush and square second one pretty measure okay again we're just setting that up trying to get the depth and get it close to the height so the other side will end up working we'll come back here this part is a little monotonous but if you follow this procedure works like a charm up to the board okay very important when you're working you can't let the box beam roll on you because right now I'm making contact when I straighten it up I'm a good chunk of the way out here so to keep that from moving and throw a screw into this post and we'll want to roll around so much there we go [Music] okay and now we can come down here and adjust this one again we want to make sure we're Square okay box babe now we're not done yet obviously that's no way that's strong enough what we're doing is we're just throwing in some temporary screws to carry the weight of the board itself now we're going to come by we're going to trim off all the tops seal it all up and I'm going to show you my load carrying steel bolt system that'll transfer five thousand pounds per post so you can build whatever you want on here here we go just swapped out an eight inch blade for the wood and what I'm going to do is I'm going to set the blade flat on the tops and put the plate of the reciprocator up against the board and push that should keep the machine still if the blade do all the work we should be able to cut this nice and flush here [Applause] very important to make sure it's at least flush don't leave it raised at all or interrupt with the installation of the Joyce package and it's okay like this perfect whenever you're cutting structural wood make sure you seal up the end of every cut before you install your posts okay pressure treated doesn't go all the way through the board it just soaks into the wood on the outside all right and then same thing once you've cut down your posts you've got to seal anything structural okay be liberal with this let it soak right up it's okay if that stays wet for a few minutes all right because this is going to protect the structure long term and that'll protect your investment we're going to just rain this on okay to seal it up all right well that's awesome so now we have three boxes which is two one two stages for the deck [Music] it's a little bit of work with this bit the key is to constantly clean it out so that it doesn't overheat all right now we put the bolt in it won't just push through okay the hole is drilled perfect to the size of these threads so we actually have to hammer it in now this isn't installed until it's flushed with the wood all right now it's installed when it takes that much energy to put a bolt Through the Wood you know it's going to carry the load you'll notice I'm also about four or five inches down from the top and the truth of it is nothing splits when you start far enough away from the top and you seal the wood this is the best load transfer system on the market and we want to drive this nut until the washer it's flush with the wood okay now it's embedded that's not going anywhere 5000 pounds per post this deck can carry forty thousand pounds nobody has that many friends so our design has the deck coming through roughly the middle of the staircase so we're going to remove the steps um luckily for us builders make them really simple they make a platform and they make stairs and they just tie it together with a few screws okay now this is just like framing a wall we're going to put the ends together we're going to measure our 69 centers when you're working with five quarter deck boards it's actually one inch solid thick you need a 16 inch spacing if you're doing a deck like this and finishing with composite make sure you check with the manufacturer in a lot of cases composite requires 12 inch on Center because in the heat tends to get a little soft and doesn't have the same structural Integrity as wood does in the heat okay so you mark the 16s and you throw an x to the right my tape is little red squares things like simple so you take your mark joists walk it over put it right in the middle mat a little bit easier set it on your post same thing over here remember these boards are the same length as the ones underneath okay so the box beam and your Rim joists are the same Dimension so you just line all these up nice and simple all right and now we're going to fill in the Middle with all of our two by eights that we need now remember we use two by ten on the bottom and up here we're using two by eight because our beams are only eight feet apart okay a two by eight can span eight feet if you want to go to two by six you have to build your beams every five feet okay or you're gonna have so much deflection it'll feel like a trampoline now just for Simplicity my first Fastener I'm going to use a screw all four corners this is some have a cage it's not going to fall all over the place and make a mess that way I can finish up with my compressor my air nailer we're just going to pound all these in two by eight requires four Fasteners on each side don't forget that 'll keep it strong and from rolling over what I want to do is I want to maneuver everything so that my two by eight my rims are flush with the ends okay and that every joist will be touching a piece of the two by ten all right now we're just to fill in all the holes one of the reasons I showed people how to make the box beam as you can see the mercy that's involved this entire structure can be slid all the way over here and as long as each of these joists is a half an inch on top of this two by ten the load transfer continues all the way through to the post into the ground so now you can actually measure off the building put on your triangle and square off your whole deck on top of the box beams and then once you've got that where you want it we can go to the next step I'm sure a lot of you have seen this if you haven't we're basically taking measurements three four and five um I got hurricane ties and I love these because if you can kind of get in here under the floor joist action I'm right here for instance I can attach it to the two by ten end of the floor joists right and it's not so that it doesn't lift up and blow away with Dorothy and her little dog and so that we can establish our square and maintain it while we do the rest of the build you don't want to trust on a couple of deck screws because they break rather easily so throw a few of these in and whenever you're using structure use structural screws why not at the end of the day if you don't want something to move because it's going to wreck your life if it happens you don't trust a deck screw deck screws are great when you're dealing with gravity keep things from flying around but we're not dealing with gravity here we're dealing with Shear forces somebody um is working they bump into the deck he could knock the structure out a square on us so we want to make sure we maintain that and this is the way to do it and for everybody who hasn't seen this before this little box comes with its own bit you buy it right next to the structural nails for floor joists on the Shelf at the Home Depot it's not rocket science it's a hex head so it sits right in there no Hammer necessary this his structure put a couple in the bottom couple in the top generally speaking you put one of these screws in every hole when it's designed for structural load and for actual hurricane situations but for us it's just keep things Square so two is fine we'll put one in all four corners and then we're ready to move on now the requirement here for adding to the next stage is really simple we use the same Rim we don't need another one all we do is offset or joist we can nail from the other side okay nice and simple we're going to be installing our Cedar with a hidden Fastener system from uh camel screws yeah we're going to be installing a hidden Fastener system from camo so the location of the joist doesn't really matter we don't have to build everything so that like you do with surface screws surface screws all these joists have to line up it's got all got to be perfect because you're going to see that row of screws and part of what makes a good deck installation with surface screws is having all your screws in a row but we don't have to so we can cheat we can actually save ourselves a rim joist and offset the installation like this all we got to do is figure out how far we want to build Our Deck now because we are are measured Off the Wall Square and our box is now Square I only need to take one measurement cut every one of these boards exactly the same length and we are good as gold I got the edge of the houses here and I don't want to go there I want just to finish up on the inside of my gas line okay so here's our property line and I'm going to come out at least 16 inches off the property line okay so that my rim my rim is right here nice nice and convenient my deck is only going to come up to about this far anyway but it's nice and convenient and it's lined up so 16 from here we're just going to put our tape measure on the wall rough to mate to my foot measure back to the foot seven feet well that's a nice round number we'll go seven feet all right four by four posts the same height as the table of the saw all right so when you're working mobile instant cutting table now we're not taking anything for granted here I'm going to measure each board at seven feet just because it does seem matte like the lumber is a little inconsistent what's up we're going to bring this down there we go oh lovely and of course I'm working with a 10 inch saw today all right thank you and we got our boards cut here's the rim for the other side we're going to mark this now based off this Rim okay and I'm just gonna put on every board opposite this board so I have a nice nailing surface bugger [Music] before we put on our Rim joists we're going to take the unseal we're going to finish all these whenever you have cut wood it's always the first thing that goes right and this is going to be a part of the deck that no one's going to see no one's going to maintain but right here is where we're going to be attaching our privacy screen and so we don't want that screen to become the weakest link as far as the structure is concerned over time so take the extra minute you had to buy a whole can you might as well use it like it only takes a couple of seconds to get this done there's a little bit more framing we want to do here because this deck my 16 foot boards and it's a 16 foot deck I've got zero Mercy for the install if the boards are the wrong size or they have splits and a lot of cedar boards have little splits in the end it's nice to cut those away what I like to do is uh because we have stairs here and this whole front is going to be visible from the living room's huge window right and then way at this end we're going to have a step at least one coming off the deck and towards the the rear entrance so we want to incorporate a nosing so we use a technique called picture framing so all the boards are running this way but at the very end we want one board coming this way that overhangs like a bull nose and so we're going to frame that up in just a second and show you how to do that we also have to Square Off that end because it needs to come forward a little bit and then we'll anchor that with our hurricane straps and then we're just going to be loading all of the cedar onto this deck and strapping it nice and tight for when we get a chance to do the install and then the day is done but first let's show you how to frame up a picture frame because that'll be crucial it gives you a lot of flexibility if your deck is just a little bit larger than the wood that you have available adding a picture frame gives you another seven inches of Dimension and so it is a really effective technique ah I'm just gonna have a quick break first because thank God this backyard gets a lot of shade but in another hour or two it's going to come around the corner here and there'll be no more hiding anyway all right Matt I gotta eyeball this I need you to pull that corner forward [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] 's getting done well you know what that wet wood needs to Blade up pretty quick yeah okay so we got that let's move this out of here okay all right every 16 inches so this is how we're installing our deck boards across the joists make sense right but if you want to have a really nice deck that's not a finished service so we're going to install them around there and you help me get that over there right across the front and move that other stuff out of the way we're just going to get the visual we're framing this up right it's rough okay that's a lot of overhang right you can step on this and roll so that's a decent that's a better looking finish because you don't see the end okay I wish I had just a little piece of this stuff cut off but I don't a better way to finish this is actually to bring this up like a nosing okay how have about a three quarter inch all right and then the best way to finish it is to take some cedar whether it's the same kind of board or like a one by three and put it across the face for this to sit on all right so then you know what that depth is you add the three quarters plus the three quarters go one and a half you can finish with that and then put lattice to the bottom that works great so you don't exactly know where the end is so when we're putting on our boards we're guesstimating here right so by adding a 2x4 and then another joist we've now created this massive amount of meat so we're going to do is always install your board to the middle of the 2x4 all right and then when you're all said and done you can come by with whatever piece you're going to put on the edge you can lay it over the top of all of the wood to the right depth you can pencil the line because this is going to have its own character it's going to have its own movement it's not going to be perfectly straight you can't chalk line and force the wood into position it's easier to set it in position pencil line it run it with a skill saw cut all the excess off and then you just drop this in on some PL premium that's how you do picture frame so knowing the end from the beginning now you know how to frame it outside Joyce flat 2x4 another joist nail it all together install all your boards to the middle and then you are golden okay I'm going to talk about this because some of you are going to be in the comments going what the hell are you doing that for Jeff and some of you are like oh that's the right way to do a deck uh this is just joist tape okay it's just the weatherproofing membrane it's a one-sided goo I mean at the end of the day because I'm making all this flat stock here because I'm going to do the picture frame it's going to take forever to dry water is going to get held here and trapped here and so it will be the first place of the deck that rots out so what I'm doing is I'm adding the joist tape in this area only my recommendation for the using joist tape is simple take a look around there's no trees you don't need it right water will fall and it'll dry and the air is going to have access to the joist between the gaps of all the boards not an issue if you're in an area where you have a lot of trees it becomes a little bit different now it becomes real vital right because if you're not going to take the time to pressure wash all of the needles and the leaves out of the joint out of the joints that trapped Organics when it gets wet really rots and once you have rotten wood up against fresh wood the fresh wood starts to rot so if you don't keep your deck clean yeah you know joist tape but if you're one of these people that's like you know once a month you're out there and you've got your pressure washer and you're cleaning out your deck or if you're in a neighborhood like this with no trees not necessary I'm gonna do two runs of it I don't want my deck rotting prematurely that's all and the only reason I really care is because this is a brand new house in a brand new neighborhood with a brand new deck you know it's not going anywhere for the next I don't know 50 years it'd be nice if it lasted that long that's like bulletproof weatherproofing here I'm going to finish off that foreign ah by the way never use this brand of product before I'm really pleased like it has great adhesion to the other membrane but it gives you a little bit of workability if you mess up your joint that's awesome we just got to put all the wood up here now okay strap it together two more here that are good we lift this up and slide them over so we know that the first few rows are all figured out already now we can just bring the rest of the boards here I'm not going any closer to the edge here because we got to get in there for the fasteners so at the end of the day when you've got your materials all delivered and the weather's looking grim and you know that the weather report is not going to allow you to come back and do any more work on your project for a few days thank you here's the solution the Twisted wood stack it strap it don't get sung by a bee there you go that's cool the end of the day if you're going to be a few days between jobs make sure you strap your wood it'll really minimize the amount of curving and warping that happens and it uh it makes a little more difficult for someone to come in your backyard and steal it while you're sleeping

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 335,329

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, how to build a ground level deck, how to build a floating deck, carpentry, how to build a shed, how to build a post and beam shed, how to use a skill saw, how to use a torpedo level, backyard deck, deck build, diy, do it yourself, how to build a ground level deck for beginners, how to build a ground level deck frame, how to build a ground level deck attached to house, how to build a ground level deck without digging

Id: 9aR8h_TgRss

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 11 2023