Is it woodworking? I think so, but with greater tolerances for error. This was my first, and I hope last, attempt at building a deck from scratch. Like most projects, it started simple. “Hey, I should replace the rotted deck boards… shouldn’t be too hard.” Yeah, you can pretty much guess what happens next.

The small deck off the side of our porch was showing some signs of rot. I thought I would replace the deck boards and all would be well.

… but then I quickly found this. The wood was literally wet, even though it had not rained for some time. The steps were constructed in a way that there was no air movement possible.

I thought, “okay, have to replace the steps too, I can manage that.” Worked on taking rest of deck boards off.

Then I started to find more problems. Technically, the deck should not overhang the support beam that much.

Notice how the main support beams are buried in the dirt? Yeah, that should not be like that.

I dug out the dirt around the beams. Wood was wet from being in the dirt.

To make matters worse, I determined the same thing was done with the main support beam that holds up our entire porch. This was after I dug things out.

… and to make things worse still, it was apparent that the three posts supporting the porch were rotting as well! That’s a major structural problem.

So now I knew I had a much bigger problem on my hands.

So much for the “professionals” that built the porch. This is one of the posts after I ripped it out. In Wisconsin the frost line is about 48″, so the post should be about that long. Not even close.

So, that means digging eight new holes for new support posts, each about 3′ in diameter by 4′ deep. And of course the electric into our house complicated the digging.

Why are rocks always in the worst place?

Maybe I can dig it out? Yeah right.

Building a deck requires more precision than you might think. Mistakes now lead to problems later. Getting things square is critical.

Digging under the porch. This was back-breaking work. I knew I had to install new posts to support the porch. That involved digging big holes in front of the porch, then digging sideways.

Filling in each new hole allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief. We were really worried about the old rotted posts (not) holding up our porch.

Turns out I took very few pictures of the actual deck build. I was very, very focused on just getting it all done! This project consumed an entire summer.

This is where accuracy early on pays off. I was really anal about getting things just right when laying out posts and joists. Had I not done that, many other problems would have popped up later.

For a first effort, I was really happy with how things turned out. I don’t say that often.

I made some mistakes on the steps, but most people wouldn’t notice unless I pointed it out!

This project nearly beat me. The digging alone was overwhelming. In all, it pretty much consumed all my “spare” time from May 2020 through September 2020. Good thing the world was shut down for a pandemic!