One fine day, I leaned over to pull some weeds (I spend a good deal of my weekends pulling weeds), and rested against the edge of the deck. Well, a piece came off.
I decided to investigate further, and, yes, there was a lot of rot at the bottom of this support post. So, I started pulling away the rotted pieces.
And I found more rot. In fact, a bunch of the joists (? - I'm guessing on the terms) were rotted.
I started pulling away the deck boards. I found that I had two layers of boards. Most were fine, but around the edges, they were in bad shape. I kept pulling them up, thinking, this will be fun. I'll rebuild the portion of my deck.
It wasn't so bad once I got the hang of it.
You can see that the boards over-hang the end of the deck by about 6".
This was the hard part -- the last piece that had to slide against the house on the opposite end. Luckily, I have a table saw, and I could rip the piece to the proper width.
I got the last piece in and used my circular saw to cut the boards flush with the framing piece. I had also bought some fir for the stairs that had a bullnose end. I ripped off the bullnose from one piece and used it to complete the front edge of the deck. All done, and it looks nice.
Then, I tackled the rotted post.
Well, I took it apart. I had a pretty good idea what I had to do. Cut off the rotted part at the bottom, add some framing pieces on the inside of the post (it's hollow) and then put on new outer pieces. But, since my contractor was coming, I let him do this. It's much easier that way, and it looks right. I painted the deck with primer. It's been two years, and I'm hoping to paint it gray this summer.
