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Ever since i got hooked into "fish keeping", I kind of neglected my lawn. I had let my front lawn turn brown, and living in an association, that's a no-no. So i brought it back to life with daily watering and scott's turf builder/fertilizers. My side yard, however, is behind my white vinyl fence which can't be seen from the street soooo i just let that one run down to the ground, literally.  I always wanted to have a big cement patio but i'm 95% sure the association wont allow it. Something like, not more than 50% of your lot can be cemented. I went and got estimates just for the hell of it. I think lowest was $5500. Highest was like $12,000. Everything in Hawaii is expensive. Us locals kinda just accepted it. So anyways, I got quotes to have sprinklers and grass installed along with estimates for synthetic grass. ALL EXPENSIVE, for me anyways. The thing with grass is maintenance and extra water charges. I wasn't looking for more bills to pay. While my girlfriend and I were talking about it one night, she just so happened to tell me to build a deck. I remember pausing for a moment. Why didn't i think of that? It's weird too cuz I actually remember going to someone's house where they had a wooden "platform" over their dirt. I just didn't think to do it to my yard... So it begins.. I wanted to TRY and stay within a budget of $1000. HA, yeah, that didn't happen.. But I did sign up for a LOWE'S card to get 5% off of all of my purchases. I also did shop around for cheapest lumber and came out that LOWE'S was the cheapest. It also helps A LOT when you have a friend that helps for food! LOL. Well, I gave him more than food like cigarettes, groceries, and whatever else he needed. So, 1st lumber purchase..  I think it was about 25 pieces of 2x4x16 feet. Yes, I made sure those things were tied in very good! Next, was framing everything up.   Oops, actually, we mended pieces together to make a 37 foot run. i wanted it this way since the width of this "deck" would be 16 feet so i would be able to easily lay down a 1x4x16 right over everything. Might not be the smartest/easiest thing to do now that i think of it but oh well. This is where im stuck now. My elbow was giving me problems from a chronic injury that happened many years ago. It's almost been a week since i last worked on this deck. We were only able to get 2 truck loads of gravel before stopping.    It also started to rain HARD on this day which told me to call it for the day. I'll publish this post for now and continue on later. OH BOY! We sure did get a lot done yesterday! I ended up picking up 3 more truck loads of gravel to level out the ground. Mainly because of my "swell" I have for water drainage. Had to fill that up. Im pretty sure it'll drain fine. Man, we busted ass from 930am-7pm. most of the day was shoveling gravel from truck to wheelbarrow, then to ground, then shoveling to where it was needed. All those gaps you see under the wood, yup, that's where gravel had to go. I think we finished up with the gravel around 4 or 5 pm. I had bought 20 1x6x16 from LOWE'S as they had the lowest prices. But, their wood was kinda crappy. A lot of bowed, warped, cracked, damaged wood. I took 20 of the best they had. 20 only covers 1/4th of my deck.       Look at those pictures above! That's at 7pm! Gotta love summertime! |