What's Next?

I've ordered the Fiberon for the handrails; we talked about delivery on Thursday.

• Test a solid (not grooved) scrap of Fiberon to see if I can use a sander to ease the edges for the handrail.
• Cut and install a sample riser (tread 1 on the upper deck). If it seems to work, buy more rough sawn fence boards at Lowes and cut and install all the risers.
• Finish drilling and screwing the tread slivers and fill in the missing screws on the other tread boards.
• Install another 2x8 block at the east prow to receive a screw
• Protect the deck and give the railing another coat of black stain
• Continue black stain on the underpinnings (now or later)
• Order the parts for the cable rail:
• 400-500' of 1/8" 1x19 t316 stainless steel wire rope ($100)
• Hydraulic crimper and wire cutter ($106)
• 72 pairs of swage screws (CKE?) ($180)
• 32 through-sleeves* (I'm not sure they'll fit in the 2x4 mid supports)
• Finish design of electrical system
• Order the 102' outdoor lights (Banord, $86). 
• Order the under-railing LED strip lights?
• Cut and install the handrail
• Design the basement stairs enclosure
• Order the Bilco door?

Backyard Lighting

It's simple. Boring, really. I want to hang outdoor Edison bulbs over the concrete patio, just like everyone else in 2020. Amazon sells a nice Banord 102' string for $86. Plug it in at an outlet under the eaves at the west corner of the house, control the outlet with two, three-way switches at the two outside doors, and we're done.

110' zig-zag, so we don't run all the way to trees

Update: After extensive testing, the sewage ejector appears to be alone on 20A circuit #29. Also, there is an overlooked outlet in the breezeway that is on circuit #3 along with the outlets in the living room.

Further, the under rail lights might be Strip LEDs. See https://hitlights.com/. 

This lights the main concrete patio and, incidentally, the lower deck. Soft under-railing lighting seems better for the upper deck (although we have to light the steps specifically). A low voltage transformer and foliage uplights scattered about should make the yard usable after dark. 

Both trees conveniently have no lower branches

I imagine a noose of rope around each tree, with a length about four feet pulled taut by the light string. That way, the string of lights won't go all the way to the trees, lighting the planting and shining on the tree trunk. Also, the 102' string will work, since it shows 110' on the plan, which doesn't account for catenary sag or other real world issues.

Adequate headroom, judging by the door height

The idea is to take the power now connected to the sewage ejector and connect it to outlets in the breezeway notch, and on either side of the lower deck (shown in purple in the photo). The lights are powered by a switched outlet up at the eave, controlled by 3-way switches at the BR3 door and the glass door at the breezeway. The low-voltage transformer can plug in to the west-most outlet. (Not sure whether to put the lower deck switch where shown (above the folding chair) or between the door and the window. The latter is a little more natural, but it's in the way if we remodel the window.) Oh, and of course, the sewage ejector plugs into a third outlet which has the GFCI for all the other devices.

We can do better than Romex popping out of the wall.

Sunday Night Status

Deja vu. Haven't I done a status report every Sunday since the before times?

Update: Yes, yes we have. https://treeshousejournal.blogspot.com/2020/07/sunday-night-status_19.html, https://treeshousejournal.blogspot.com/2020/07/sunday-night-status.html, https://treeshousejournal.blogspot.com/2020/07/saturday-night-status.html, https://treeshousejournal.blogspot.com/2020/06/sunday-night-status.html

Painted the house last thing Saturday.

Sunday was all about the "frame."

So many problems with the frame. The non-45-degree miters were tough. The "ladder" blocking was 1/16" low (to avoid being high), which made the east and west frames "sag" and required shims. On the plus side, adding the silly little triangle by gluing it with cyanoacrylic glue (because it was too small to screw) worked perfectly. There's a reason the woodworkers I watch on YouTube like CA glue. Can't use it much, though--Fiberon expands and contracts with temperature. 

Cyanoacrylate glue to the rescue. (I just like saying that word.)

Only the lowest tread is screwed in, but two more are cut and ready. (The others are just for show.)

Note to self: Saying you want a 4' stair is fine, but make the stringers 3'-10" so you can get four full treads from a 16' board. Next time. These are 4'-2", wasting a lot of $3/LF material.

Running Out of Supplies; Fear the End is Near

As the lower deck turns to Fiberon, I thought it would be useful to conduct an inventory.

(4) 16' solid

(9) 16' groove

(20) 12' groove

I think that's not enough solid, which I need for: the frame, the treads, and the handrails. There are six frame pieces; let's number them from 1 at the west to 6 at the east.

16' board: #1 (4' 2"), #2 (4' 2"), #5 (5' 4"), 2' 4" left

16' board: #4 (8' 2"), #6 (6' 10"), 1' left

16' board: #3 (3' 4"), 3x front treads @ 4' 2", 2" left

16' board: 2x front treads @ 4' 2", 7' 8" left

This assumes that I'll use grooved boards for the treads inside, where the edge isn't visible.

I need 28' 6" of railing for the lower deck, 16' 6" for the upper deck. Maybe I should order 4 more 16' solid boards @ $44--that's $176 + $40 delivery, $238 with tax. Or, I could buy 6, 8' boards and sand, stain, and polyurethane them. Dunn Lumber sells C-grade, Vertical Grain (CVG) Douglas Fir 2x6 for $6.58 a linear foot, so $315.84 without tax, delivery, stain, or polyurethane. I'm concerned that a Fiberon handrail won't look as good as it should.

Fiberon boards are 5.25" with 3/16" between them. It's about 3' 8" from the house to the frame at the top of the stairs--we have to use 16' boards for the deck. 44" / 5.4375" is 8 rows and 1/2" I have to deal with. I'll have to verify the 44" in the field, but I'm inclined to hold the deck away from the house to make everything work out. Either way, that uses up the 16' grooved boards with one left over.

I'll fill in the prow with 12' boards and hopefully have some 4' 2" scraps for stair treads. Actually, I realized just now that the inventory did not include a bunch of ~3' scraps from the upper deck. I'd have to pencil it all out, and I'm wasting daylight.

Ten Days

More staining to do. More joist taping. I want to paint the house where it meets the deck. Then, cut and install the "frame" boards and lay down the decking.

Sunday, July 12

Monday, July 13

Tuesday, July 14

Friday, July 17

Sunday, July 19

Tuesday, July 21

Wednesday, July 22

Compared to...

Saturday, June 6

Tuesday, June 23 (17 days)

Sunday, June 28 (22 days)

Sunday Night Status

A fairly productive weekend, considering how long the list is. Not only how long (how many items) but how wide (so many steps, posts, joists, and so on).

This is the weekend that I had to stomp on a 4x4 to finish a cut from my anemic cordless circular saw.

Copper Green Brown (long story)

I cut ten 4x4 posts, then notched them--not a trivial task, since it involves aligning circular saw cuts from two sides and finishing with a hand saw. Once they were notched, I marked and drilled for 20 through-bolts. Just the countersink--the process I developed on the upper deck calls for making the post plumb in both directions and holding it that way before drilling and installing the bolts.

In one big push after dinner on Sunday, I cut the stair stringers and applied wood preservative. You only need preservative on cut edges, so if you cut a 2x4, you just "paint" the cut end with preservative. Now picture the 12 cuts made on each stringer.

I made a note to myself to be careful applying preservative to the stringers. For the upper deck, I lined them up on the wall in the narrow alcove where Casey's bath meets the breezeway. I "painted" all the edges while breathing in the stuff I had already painted. So, for the lower deck, I applied most of the preservative with the stringers in place. Lots more fresh air. You know how cop movies always have an officer who's just days from retirement get shot? Well, on the last board, I flung a bunch of preservative at my bare arm. I washed it thoroughly and immediately. I haven't turned into the Hulk yet.

Tomorrow, following the list, I'll install the stringers (using Simpson LSCZs at the top) and continue down the list. I think the next thing is 2x4 "X" bracing, the Simpson DTT1Z tension devices, then mounting all ten posts. Then I stain everything black with the Valspar "Darkest Night" stuff--the stair stringers are almost all painted, the deck joists almost all not, but I do have to go around the edge of the whole deck. Then I paint the wall of the house where it meets the deck. At some point, I have to install black joist tape on every single joist. I won't get to the decking before August at this rate.

Next Steps, Get it?

Saturday was entirely consumed by my plan to make the lower set of stairs better than the upper set. As I wrote this morning, the idea was to frame and level a box for the first tread, so that all the stringers will be equal.

The problem, as I explained to Casey, is knowing where the stair case will meet the ground. We need the exact height from the ground at the front of the stair to the deck in order to calculate the number of risers. Once we know the number of risers, we know the number of treads is one less. The number of treads dictates where in space the front of the stair is. It's circular. 

My best estimate, from a few days ago, suggested that we need 6R and 5T (unlike the 5R for the upper stairs, and the 5R I had assumed here). Based on that estimate, I drew a careful 1-1/2"=1'-0" section through the stairs. Knowing that the SW corner (lower left in the photo above) would be the lowest point, I decided that the riser at that point would need to be 6.75" like the rest of the stairs. The framing for that first step would taper from there.

Approximate is easy. Any closer to precise is harder than one might think.

I wasn't even sure where that corner would be--extending the line of the west side of the deck (left in the photo) was not as easy as it would be on the drafting table. I came down from the right side, plumb using the level, then measured a distance equal to the width of the stairs as built. My first attempt was crooked because I used just one data point. I thought that a black Sharpie would work, but the concrete needs scrubbing with TSP. 

The edge of the concrete in the photo above is not parallel to the deck, and the rim joist on the right of the photo is part of the prow, so it's angling off in another direction. It's a real world optical illusion, making it very hard to "eyeball" it.

Once I had the tape outline of the first tread, I used a level and a square to calculate the slopes of the bottom of the four boards that would hold up the tread. I cut the long boards first. The bottom of each was cut on a 2.5-degree angle, to accommodate the slope of the concrete. One needed a "shave" to be level--my calculation was off by about 1/4" in 48"--but now they both checked out as level. Trouble is, they were nowhere near level to each other, front to back. I threw out the uphill board and cut it again, because not only was the downhill board level, the western-most corner was the correct height for the 6.75" riser (once a deck board was added).

The sun is setting, but we have a stair tread.

I also worried about that newel post. The typical post has two 1/2" bolts, but the shallow height of the side board would only allow one bolt. (We keep the bolts 2" from the edge of the wood.) Peggy sent me a JLC article on the subject a week ago, and I remembered that it involved a long thru-bolt. My situation isn't like the one in the article, but the long bolt, lots of extra solid blocking, and a bunch of construction screws should make the post pretty sturdy. I haven't installed any of that yet, because I want to make sure the post is plumb in both directions.

In case you're wondering, the newel post has to be in that position relative to the riser board so that it will align with the posts up on the deck. The first small board next to it is just blocking; there will be another block hemming the post in that makes the tread box seem like a simple rectangle. Then there will be two more blocks on the inside in the direction of the bolt tension. The stringers will align with the three little boards to the right in the photo, but the outside (left-most) stringer will align with the blocking that isn't there (so that the stringer's relationship to the posts is maintained).