The New Deck - Finishing the Frame (Almost)

I'm making good progress on the new deck.  I was eager to start putting in the floor joists but first a layer of stones was needed over the plastic sheeting.  The inside corner where the sunroom joins the house gets almost no sun and it seemed that moving any rain water away from the house in this area would relieve the damp conditions, which is what the plastic does.  Friday I went into town, bought some stone and spread it out.

With the stone down the joists could be set in.  This is where the beam in post and beam construction is really handy.  With one or both ends of the joist setting on top of the beam there is no need to make an exact cut, the joist simply has to pass over the beam by a few inches. 

The above picture shows two sections with the joists set in place.  A header was set between the first beam and the house to carry the last two joists, since the beam could not extend all the way to the house.  The joists attaching to the header required an exact cut to fit between the header and ledger board.  Here's a view of the joists from the existing deck.  Some planks were set across the joists to give access to the sunroom until the flooring goes down.

Today was the day to put the vinyl siding back on.   Last week I located a match for the siding with a local supplier and bought two sheets.  The remaining damaged sheets were cut and spliced to fill in the space.  I don't much like vinyl siding but that's what is on the house and this wasn't the time to reinvent the wheel.  The joists were set into the third section.  This took a while to do with cutting a 52 degree bevel on one end (there's a trick for this which I'll try to go into later).

Next I'll set the floor boards into the first section near the sunroom.  I won't set in the joists near the house until the floor is complete in that section.  It makes it a lot easier go from saw to workspace if I can walk on solid ground most of the trip.