So first job of the day was to figure out why the deck frame was longer than the deck boards. Turns out the 360 cm long joists I purchased to form the sides of the frame are actually 362 cm long, nice one nation wide DIY firm, it certainly does have your name on it, written all over it in fact.
It is so typical of the shoddy quality of merchandise you get from DIY chains these days, wood in particular. You really have to check that every single piece isn't bent like a banana, split or has huge chunks knocked out of it.
So after hiking the frame up onto the sleeper wall I removed the end crossbeam, took 2cm of each side of the frame and re-drilled and screwed the crossbeam. With everything now the correct length I was ready for the next job.
While the deck frame sits level on the ground and will be suitably heavy once all the deck boards are attached I want to be really sure that it never moves. So the frame will be secured by bolts at eight points to 75 x 75 fence posts which will be sunk into the ground and concreted in place. So I needed to dig the eight holes, bearing in mind that I'm already at 2.5 feet below the original ground level you can imagine how compacted the earth is and how difficult it was to carve out eight 1.5 foot holes from it, finally 2-3 hours later and I was done.
Last job for the day was to lay the anti-weed fabric under the decking frame.
So the final position for the day was this:
Tomorrow; bolts, legs, pea gravel and maybe, just maybe even some deck laying..
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