How to Build a Deck in a Day

hey it's jeff from home renovation here in the next 20 minutes i'm going to teach you how to make a ground level deck that way you can enjoy living in your backyard instead of sitting in the dirt step one to building a ground level deck is your surface preparation now for me i'm lucky um the guys that were here before me actually put down geotextile already back to filled it with ga because the ga comes with rock and stone dust it leaves room for organics to sit here and grow i think it went down maybe a year or two ago by the look of it we got some weeds that are growing in and you know just a little bit of dirt that's laying around you can see the g the cloth is exposed here not concerned about this when i build the deck and i close it up there won't be enough sunshine to promote any of this growth and that'll all end up just being done so don't be too concerned about it if you have a situation like this but for the most part you want to put down some cloth the thicker the better right the geotextile is the best the little thin light gray stuff will probably work as well but lay it down before you build your deck and work on top of a clean surface let's get to building so the next thing you need to know about is your structure now we're using two by eights and the reason i like using two by eights for deck is because that's the same height as any step so your your body is very used to an eight inch step so when you use a two by eight you get a seven and a quarter inch board plus the top finishes runs you around the eight eight and a quarter inch area and generally speaking that's very normal and natural and you're not going to have tripping hazards so the other thing you can do is when you're using two by eights is you can make multiple platforms and stack them and build something huge and elaborate all out of the same material so everywhere you go it's the same step as when you come outside or go upstairs to your bedroom you're not gonna have any issues so here we are what we're looking for is crown matt i just got to check this one wow that one's going this way and i just put an arrow on it and by crown what i mean by crown is i want you to look just like down here and you're going to see the wood it'll have a bend one way or the other or to be neutral okay so we mark the board generally you always want the crown up and then under the weight of people and furniture and that sort of thing it'll if it sags it it'll sag flush if you go the other way you'll end up with dips and valleys and then it's really difficult to put the boards on and have them stay in place without having the screws and nails pop through now there are a couple of basic rules of building and you're gonna need to follow when you're building your deck one is you need to use the right fasteners or fastening system and the second is you've got to have the right spacing most wood comes with a five quarter inch board which is actually one inch thick you want to have your spacing set 16 inches apart on center the same goes true for some composites but if you're going to use other composites you got to go to 12 inches so make sure you check your manufacturer's instructions but for us today we're going to try to keep this simple and as low cost and quick as possible so we're just going pressure treated all the way through and so we're going to go 16 inch on center now when you're attaching all of your lumber i've got a few different systems here depending on your tools obviously the easiest is going to be use a pneumatic nailer but you can go out and just buy yourself some three-inch spikes okay and you can use a hammer nail to put all this together because the truth is if you have a hammer and a measuring tape you can build the deck we're using here is a two by eight by ten foot at the end and twelve foot for the length now the store that we bought it out every single one of these a 12 foot joist is exactly the same length we double check the measuring tape first so we already have the material cut to go square we don't have to do any cuts out here so reality if you want to do a quick 10 by 12 foot deck you don't even need a saw if all you have is a hammer you can build a deck too the rule with fasteners you want one fastener for every two inches of dimensional lumber this is a two by eight it gets four nails if you want to build it quick the nailer is definitely the best option now matt's using these snails here which are three and a quarter inch they're a little smaller than the nail that i've driven with the hammer but they're a hardened steel and they carry the same structural load you got to keep your hands far far enough away up the board when you're nailing it in that you don't hurt yourself so like back here would be a good enough spot to to hold it you'd throw a few nails in there so a little trick i learned uh when i was framing houses you use that little claw on the back your hammer when you've got a board that's twisted like this right now if i nail it in it'll just be twisted and my nails will be like on an angle so you use your claw you put it on top you just rotate it up completely flat a 90 degree angle and then you can nail them in just to keep them straight and pretty you know straight and pretty going to make it straight and pretty so once you've got your frame nailed together or screwed together or however you're going to put it together you just want to make sure that a is in the right position and check your level now if you don't have a level there's all kinds of other options to level something out there's a water level which is a long plastic pipe you fill it with water and you just put you hold it up and you put a marker on it and you can put one end on each end and you can manipulate things until the water is on those black lines it's that simple but i have a six foot level i like to use it the high side of this deck is that far corner so you have options if you're doing a quick simple ground level deck like this you don't have to go through all the hassle of digging holes and putting in blocks and leveling it out there are much more complicated ways to build a deck that's floating and if you want to see that we have an entire series on how to build a floating deck that's off the ground and multi-level and stairs and ramps and you can click the card up here but for this video it's just about how to get out of the dirt so what we're going to do is i'm going to cut some two by fours just small sections maybe even some two by eight in a couple of corners and i'm going to just lay it down we're going to lift the corner and laminate the two boards together to transfer the load from the joist or from the rim right to the ground it'll be that simple now the fastest way to level off a ground level deck just put your level on the board find your high spot and then you want to get your bubble right in between the two lines so what i'm going to do is i'm going to just lift this up a little bit until i like it and then matt's going to drive that screw from the the separate block into that lumber and that's going to transfer the load to the ground and once we've got it all leveled off we'll come back with the nails and we'll fire in a bunch of nails to give it the strength that we need right there [Music] okay once we've got the four corners done we'll just do that with the rest of the joists and that'll get rid of our deflection issues we can do that all the way down the middle as well so that we have contact with the ground every five feet [Applause] all right so right about now some of you guys are putting in questions and comments and oh it's all about building code this isn't right and whatever whatever i'm going to try to communicate this with you as effectively as i can there is no building code for decks that are below 24 inches in my area other states are going to have different rules so make sure you check the rules in your state some areas every deck is going to have to be attached to the ground but the point is this in my area if i don't attach this to the house it's not structural i can build it any way i want there are no rules okay so all you have to do is remember this you have to use good building practice which means you have to use the right amount of fasteners to put things together you have to use some common sense you got to follow some basic guidelines when you build it you don't want people falling through it and getting hurt obviously so you can't just get all creative as you want you got to follow some of these procedures okay use proper structural lumber use proper fasteners use proper deck boards and you'll be fine it's not rocket science if you want to get yourself out of the dirt just do it quick and simple like this you'll be done in a couple hours now the next thing we want to do is we want to square the deck off make sure that it's not built like this right makes sense and then we can start putting our deck boards on and that's just a simple process of installing a bunch of screws yes if you wanted to you can use the air nailer and you can nail down your boards but nails rust and rust looks like garbage and i just prefer to use a deck screw so we'll jump into that next and we'll talk about all the different decking options that you have now you've all seen this on other decking videos i'm sure but the basic idea is if the measurement from corner to corner is the same then it's square 189 and a half 190 [Music] so the diagonal that way is a little longer and when all you do is step back and take a look i can see that my deck is twisted this way just a little bit which is why this corner is closer to that one and that corner is further away so all i'm going to do is just give this a tug this way a little bit problem solved so we're at a point now we've got to put on decking now for our basic deck here i'm using pressure treated lumber and pressure treated has changed a lot over the years it used to be green now we got this new c in the brown now there's going to be a whole world of controversy over this let's just take a look at this new growth trees you see these tight little rings the growth rings on this tree this board is almost as big as this tree was and i know there's all kinds of discussion out there on the internet about should the grain here be looking like a rainbow or a smile there's a couple of different factors that will affect your choice one but look at this one looks like a rainbow okay so the old school carpenters say put it in like a smile and that works really good because they're talking about is the bark side out from the tree okay they're talking about the way it cups they're talking about this or that and old school carpenters had old old-school lumber great big huge trees and it worked really well for them but look at this see this edging here how this is coming loose okay right here and this whole middle vein here that's actually the center of the tree and what happens is after about one month maybe two it starts it gets a rain and it starts to lift and all these become these little really nasty little slivers so the only way to protect yourself from all those slivers is to flip it over and put it in like a rainbow which is contrary to old-school carpenter technique but when you're doing your decking look at it for this you're going to be putting in two screws it's not going to do much lifting or cupping or anything anyway okay it's not a real big issue what you want to do is make sure that anything that's looking like it's going to become a splinter down the road is on the bottom side and the discussion if you're in direct sun okay then you're going to have a more dramatic shrinkage it's more dramatic cupping if you're in the shade or you're in a northern climate it's not quite so severe so it doesn't really matter at all um if you're gonna be in the hot sun then i would suggest in this environment go and pick out your own lumber and avoid the boards that are the center core right on the edge because every one of those is gonna disappoint now as far as this is concerned we're going to just be screwing this down we're installing tight this lumber is still pretty fresh it's only been here for one day so it doesn't really finish the drying out process yet i have a landscape cloth down here which acts a lot like a moisture barrier to a certain degree because this is a high quality geotextile so i'm going to have a little bit of shrinkage here if you're right on top of soil and you're close to the ground you're going to get a lot of moisture and then the wood will actually end up swelling it's not going to shrink so there's a lot of different things to consider here bottom line is this if you have questions about your own specific soil conditions and the job that's going on at your house you can always ask questions in the comments section and i'll make sure to help you all it all right so this is kind of the whole point of the idea of this deck was to make this really simple right so what i have is i have a 10 foot board rim joist i have 10 foot decking boards i'm going to start flush on my most exposed corner and that's it okay i'm going to screw it down now most people if you're going to screw down a board and you're near the end it's going to split so what i do is i just get a little bit of a start i put it in reverse and i hold it still and i screw backwards get a bit of a burn going and then drive it forward [Music] guaranteed never to split now keep in mind depending where you live you might have the brown or the green pressure treated there are brown and green screws but all things do the same thing no matter which lumber you have it'll turn brown over time so always buy the brown screw green screws look like junk next year because your would have faded all that green property that in the pressure tree would have lifted out and it's gone brown you're gonna have green dots everywhere so save yourself the hassle keep this flush all the way down and mark the screw mark the joist line now none of these boards are going to be straight you already know that the secret is before you put it all down go to the furthest point and straighten it out way down here because it takes a lot less strength to do it all right now we've got a nice straight line the rest of the boards can be installed tight to each other they'll finish their drying process they'll leave a little bit of gap for rain and that's it one of the things you're going to know deck boards are not going to be straight make sure you got an extra 2x4 here for lever weight down close the gap done so now the secret is to put in all your screws one board at a time and try to keep them straight always the same gapping one inch from the edge right in the center of that joist line and it's nice to have two people doing this so what i'm going to do is i'm going to get my boys out here i'm going to have them install the rest of these deck boards and then we can talk about finishes and the controversy between oil base and water-based products and what you can do to preserve the life of your deck and avoid having to stain every year all right so depending on the kind of gap situation you're using you may or may not finish flush okay it also depends how dry the wood is when it's delivered so having an extra piece of lumber around like a two 2x4 we just had an extra joist i cut it down okay you want to lift that up we're going to put it nice and flush with the front and we're going to extend the deck a little bit and we're going to add our last board to finish off nice and flush okay so now we've got a ground surface deck there's one other thing to talk about and that is how to preserve it and take care of it over time if you're going with pressure treated the best solution i have for you is leave it alone and then pressure wash pressure treated pressure wash right a couple times a year it'll clean off any of the moss and fungus so that kind of grows on it and it'll last 20 years like this no problem no maintenance if you want to do something different get a little color have a little more fun then may i suggest using an oil based product instead of water i know a bunch of years ago everybody in the industry tried to go to water-based products because using something that was oil was deemed to be not environmentally friendly reality is this the water-based chemicals are exactly that full of chemicals and they don't penetrate the wood they sit on the surface as a result the sealers and the stains and the paints they all take really bad wear and tear with the combination of moisture coming through the wood from the ground and the sun's uv rays and they don't last so you end up spending half of your summer every two years sanding and finishing and fixing your deck it's just a waste of time if you use an oil-based sealer even with a semi-transparent tint you can get a great result and maintain it in just a few minutes a year okay so oil base is actually more environmentally friendly because you spend less time screwing around with it and it'll preserve your wood a lot better so you don't have to cut down another block of trees to build again deck again in 10 years having said that this is quick it's simple it costs about 650 for all the wood and all the all the hardware and you get 120 square feet of living space which is the size of the average dining room so we're just going to put the furniture on here and then stick around for the before and afters okay it's going to blow your mind the transformation that happens with just a couple hours of work remember if you have any questions about your particular situation ask them in the comments section if you need help designing your deck or anything like that then feel free to join the membership program and enjoy the before and afters [Music] [Music] remember for about 600 bucks and just a few hours of work you can have a living oasis in your backyard and if you want to do something more intricate and detailed you can click the link up here and check out how you can make it multi-stage living space in the backyard with built-in planters and handrails and all sorts of good stuff

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 790,138

Rating: 4.9032187 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, diy deck, diy, how to build a deck, build a deck, deck in one day, deck in a day, building a deck, outdoor deck, deck diy, how to build a deck by yourself, deck building, home improvement, wood deck, do it yourself, build deck, frame a deck, decks, how to build a wood deck, diy decks, do it yourself deck, diy deck building, jeff thorman, ground level deck, deck building tutorial, deck build, deck ideas, building a deck for beginners

Id: l8lDyguSvJw

Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020