Once the deck was complete, we had to clean the site, which meant removing all of the excess lumber and trash that had been generated over the course of the project. Even for a small deck like ours, there was quite a bit of waste: pressure-treated lumber, unused Ipe or ends of boards that had been cut, screws and nails, and just a bunch of random garbage.

It was a great feeling to reach this final day of construction. The deck was precisely as I had imagined, and we all shook hands and felt the sense of satisfaction that comes with a job well done.

Now that the planter box was done, we could start wrapping things up. The first big chore was removing a large amount of dirt and decomposed granite that had accumulated over the course of the project. This meant digging and hauling out about 25 buckets worth of crap that I wanted out of the yard.

With all of the deck boards laid down, it was time to turn to another small project: a planter box on the West side of the deck. We wanted a spot where we could plant herbs and veggies, and there was a gap between the deck and the house that was the perfect spot.

Compared to the deck, the planter box was simple. It was to be constructed from raw redwood boards, bolted together, then dropped onto the surface beneath our living room windows. A few hours of work, and the box was ready to drop into place:

Anderson and Roberto came back the next day with a solution. All of the 14-foot boards on the North side of the deck need to be pulled up and realigned, with a different system for measuring than we had used the day before. They measured each end of the board to ensure proper distance, anchored [...]

The time had come to finish off the North boards on the deck. Anderson needed to rip a few boards down to narrower width, which meant cutting then routing the edges to match (since the boards were all rounded):

Once the stairs and landing were complete, it was time to shift gears into laying down the primary deck itself. We decided to start with the boards on the South part of the deck, since these posed the greatest challenge (or so we thought). These boards would all run East-West and connect with the other North-South boards via a 45-degree miter joint.

In order to minimize waste, we tried to vary the length of the boards that were used across the miter (since we had to cut off whatever wasn’t used of each board). This meant using at least three different board lengths, then cutting down each board to the right length using Anderson’s miter saw:

Day 9 was transitional and detail-oriented. In order to put the finishing touches on the landing and stairs, there were a lot of details that needed to be addressed. So, Anderson and Roberto focused here, with the intent being to knock out as much of the board layout on the next day as possible.

Day 8 began with finalizing the necessary support structure for the landing and the stairs, which was a bit of an extension from what we had originally.

After we selected all of the Ipe, we needed a way to get it to the house. Fortunately, Ashby Lumber was able to deliver, despite the fact that we bought the wood at their Concord facility. They delivered it the next day on a big flatbed truck. The question then became, where do we put it and how do we unload it? The truck driver had an easy answer for the latter: just drop it off the truck. Skeptical, I wanted some assurance from him that this wouldn’t damage the wood on which I had spent a sizable chunk of money. He assured me that he was the pro and had done this many times, so we went ahead and let him drop the lumber into our shared car courtyard:

With all of the basic framing and foundation set in place, the time had come to get the actual wood for the deck itself. Given that there is a lot of variability in the quality of Ipe (the Brazilian hardwood we had chosen for our deck), Anderson and I went out to the vendor (Ashby Lumber) to hand-select every piece of wood that would go into our deck. At $4 a linear foot (for 5 1/2″ x 3/4″ boards), and with a desire to minimize waste, we wanted to make sure we got boards that were straight, unmarred, and just generally beautiful.

Anderson and I drove out to the large Ashby Lumber yard in Concord and spent about an hour picking out all of the wood we’d ultimately use in the deck: