The deck is almost done... for now

In the last couple weeks, I've gotten all the deck boards on, and am almost done with the railings. The boards worked out pretty well. Half of them were reused from the old deck. They were originally "Outdoor Wood" 2x6s which means they were just dipped in the preservative agents instead of having the chemicals squeezed into the wood. The preservative nature of that wood doesn't last too long, and it was all gone on my deck board. So I flipped the boards over, sanded them, tossed about half of the boards and reused the rest.

The other deck boards were about half bought from Parr lumber which had a sale on cedar boards and from craigslist, used cedar boards. They look pretty good intermixed, and will probably look even better once a layer of stain and sealer gets applied. At the very end of the deck, I had to sub in two 2x4 cedar boards because it was too long for a single 2x6 and too short for two 2x6 boards. But two 2x4 boards worked just great. The price of cedar has shot through the roof in recent months, why I don't know. But the effect is that it will cost incredibly more to build a cedar deck this spring that it would have last year, if you pay retail price for all new wood. The Parr wood I bought was about 88 cents per linear foot (2x6s @10ft) and the craigslist wood was 75 cents per linear foot (2x6s @16ft). I could have used a single 2x8 for the last run, but Parr wanted almost $50 for a single 2x8 @ 16ft long.

I wrapped the 4x4 posts with cedar 1x wood, and reused the 2x2 railing balusters. Of course, there is some 2x4 pressure treated wood in the mix too, which was reused from the old deck. The railings, balusters and posts will all get painted white once things are complete.

All that's left is one more railing, and adding the ramada beams. That will wait until I get the chicken coop upgraded. They're getting BIG and need to move into their final home.