Deck finish work - fall 2016

Having lived with wood  decks before, I was committed to a truly maintenance-free deck solution for this house.  I never want to be trapped into the cycle of staining a deck every year.  Even the man-made "deck" materials require a fair bit of upkeep as they tend to grow mold and mildew quite quickly.  What holds up well outside?  Masonry.  The decks were all designed to take the weight of a stone or tile finish, and were also designed more like porches with solid decking.  The screen porch and the balcony are similar to each other - treated lumber framing.  The kitchen deck is concrete poured over treated lumber (set up with continuous rubber membrane like a flat roof membrane for waterproofing).  We looked at options, and the best option seemed to be porcelain tile (rated for freeze-thaw outdoors) over cement board backing for the screen porch and balcony.  Same tile will go directly down on the concrete on the kitchen deck.

The prep on the screen porch and balcony included a second layer of 3/4" treated plywood over the existing 3/4" treated plywood deck, seams offset, then 1/2" cement board stuck down with thinset and screws.  On top of that is a rubberized membrane waterproofing that was applied as a liquid (2 coats), and finally tile, also stuck down with thinset.  The kitchen deck would be ready to go as-is, since it is concrete.

Well, since the stone work took so long (plus all the "little" distractions along the way), it was getting into late Sept when this work started.  You need temps to stay above 40 overnight, for sure, but the warmer the better so that everything cures up properly.  It was getting late in the year for this.  I focused on the screen porch and balcony first, so that I could be assured to get them 100% done before thinking about the kitchen deck.  Well I ran out of good weather, so I was only able to get those 2 done, but that was pretty close to my goals for the year.  My goals were all stone work done, all decks tiled, some landscape work done, and the driveway paved,   I only came up short by 1 deck, so I will call that a win and move on into next year...

Some photos...


I had to finish off the post trim and the skirt trim on the deck before I could tile the floors (and partly before I could finish the stone work - you can see that if you look at the stone work photos earlier...)

Here is the screen porch, pretty much done.  Trim boards come primed white.

 Another angle of screen porch trim:

Here is a shot of all the trim work in place and painted. A bit of a long shot photo, but you can see the posts are now wrapped and painted on the kitchen deck and screen porch.  Also true of the balcony, but no shot of that at this stage:

First up for tile: This is after a second layer of 3/4" plywood subfloor, 1/2" cement backer board, and 2 layers of liquid applied waterproofing (the red/pink stuff).  I started laying out tiles here and sticking down the first bit (short day)

 Close-up of the first day tiles.  White things are spacers to keep the alignment.

Day 2 tile....more progress:

Day 3 tile...yet more progress.  I find I am limited in how much I can do in a day as my knees and back just can't take this for a full day.  I can get 2/3 day at best, and it hurts.

All complete on Day 5.  The moving blankets were to help keep the tile warm to cure as we had a cold night that night.  Not too cold, but cold enough to try and help it along with some blankets.

By comparison, the balcony was quick,  This was one day (same day as day 5 on the screen porch), but it is far smaller than the screen porch.  You can see it was dark by the time I finished.

Screen porch all grouted:

Balcony grouted:

Balcony all grouted, sealed and railings back in place.  These are still temp railings.  The final railings are for next summer (2017) where these two decks will also be screened in.  Next summer's big project...

And the same shot of the screen porch:

The future....
As noted earlier, I did not get the kitchen deck tiled this year.  That will be one of the early tasks for next year when the weather breaks.  That typically means just before Memorial Day.  There are a few important main outdoor tasks for "summer" 2017:  Tile the kitchen deck and finish off trim on it.  Make railings and install, including all 3 decks, and screens for the screen porch and balcony.  Build the light posts at the bottom of the driveway (my very last stone work).  Some more landscape finish work. Misc work like final exterior trim, etc

Next up for this winter is moving into interior finished work.  As of today, I am working on the oak bar top for the island and the enclosure for the vent hood over the cooktop to move the kitchen along more.  Once those are in, I will (finally) make the first of the interior doors (probably only 3 of them this year), and then move on to the master bathroom - big project there.  The goal being to wrap all that up before the weather clears and it is time to move outside, per the above list for next summer.  The good part is that after next summer the projects become a lot less critical and more in the "nice to have" category.  Another year after that and it will really be down to the details, more or less. Those final details will drag on a while as they include a lot of trim, some doors, built-ins, etc.  All time consuming stuff, but nothing really critical to living here, just makes the place nicer to live in.

Landscaping clean-up - Summer/Fall 2016

As noted, I was too busy with stone work and we needed to get the grounds under some degree of control this year, plus we needed to get the driveway paved as the washouts in big storms was getting to be a major issue.  The work mostly involved regrading some areas for drainage, getting the turn-around circle set up, a couple short stone walls for terracing the hill for some future gardening, and a bunch of landscape rock for edging and borders.

Since I wasn't doing the work, I didn't get a lot of photos of it (I was working on other things...).  So these were taken Late Nov when I realized I didn't have anything and went to write about it here...

Here is a shot from the house garage pad towards the shop. You can sort of see the terraced section on the right of the paved area, in front of the truck.  There is a better shot of that below.  Paving was another huge step this year, which happened in Oct (2016).

This is a look at the turnaround.  Due to the shape of the space, we changed it from a true circle to more of an egg-shape.  You are looking at the narrow end of it.  It made more sense to do this (and move it towards the camera a bit) as it made better use of the space.

Here is the better shot of the terraced section.  This is going to be the veggie garden eventually.  It will need fencing for deer/wildlife, but not sure that will happen next year.  So the veggies may just feed the wildlife next year...  This shot is standing on the drive, just below the truck in the earlier shot.

 Same location, just rotated looking down towards the road.  You can see the rock borders.  These are for support of the roadway and also to slow down the water that races down the hill in a heavy storm.  We used larger rock in a few places like this.  This is 4-9" range limestone (same as all the rock around the place, including the retaining walls).

Earlier (late summer/early fall) I had to do some prep work before the road was paved and the rock was laid in.  We want to put some lights down by the road, and a couple stone pillars around them, so I needed wires run.  I was not ready to run wires, but something had to go in before the rest of the work happened, so I trenched in conduit and ran a pull cord in it.  I ran 2 just to be safe.  Here is the first run.

And the pair of runs coming from the shop and going under a pass-through I put under the driveway when it was first built.  Amazingly I was able to find them again after ~5 years.  Some photos and some luck and I was able to find them with a small excavator.  It goes under the driveway at the very bottom of the pic, where it turns left.

And comes out the other side...

A few weeks before they paved the place, they came out and graded it.  This is the nicest it has ever been, prior to paving.  They have much better equipment for this than I do, and much more experience doing it.  You can see the tractor they were using down in front of the shop, on its way down the hill to load up and leave.  We had a big storm or two between this time and when they paved, so they had to touch it up a bit before paving, but not a big problem.

The landscaping this year was a step above what I did previously, but not fully final.  Several sections are pretty well set now, like the turnaround, but other areas still need work.  The main goal was to get dirt brought in and spread before the driveway was paved, and try to improve some of the obvious drainage flaws I have seen the past 2 years.  No heavy dumptrucks on the new pavement!  So this was a step above my initial efforts during the early construction, but there is still plenty to do outside.  Getting this MORE under control was the main goal, and we did that (with help).  From here it is smaller stuff, so easier to handle.  That's about it for landscaping from 2016.