![]() ![]() We didn’t do this, and now I’m going to see every screw that’s not flush with the boards and get upset. It’s not right, and it will be much easier to stop and find out why. If it doesn’t look or feel right – stop everything and pick up your computer or your phone. So about a third of our screws look like crap. I had to call the the place that sold me the screws to find this out. Instead of sitting down flush with the board, it will stop at the top of the board and just spin. The screw won’t seat in the board properly. When pre-drilling holes for the boards that need screwed down – DO NOT pre-drill through the underlying framing wood.Watching the official TREX YouTube video helped immensely, and we should have watched that first. We didn’t do this on the first board and couldn’t get the second board to fit nearly close enough. Wedge them into the grooved board, then bend down the bit that is screwed down. The hidden fasteners have to be put in JUST right.More bad deck boards The deck boards were in bad shape Things We Learned We’re going to be in the house for a long time, and we wanted something that would look nice and require little maintenance. I had power-washed the deck every other year and had it stained a few times. However, the pressure treated boards must not have been adequately maintained before we bought the house. Our deck was relatively young – it was built in 2005. Oh, and we had a full-time babysitter to watch our two young kids. Tip: Get a white colored pencil to mark your cut lines with! Way easier to see on the dark Trex boards than regular pencil. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a county for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. Her father also has two engineering degrees. This wasn’t hard, but it put a lot of stress on my arms and back. In many other cases, it took more convincing. ![]() In many cases, I could simply wedge it under the deck board, and slam it down, and an entire section would pop out of the joist. I used a 7 foot long pry bar – some serious hardware – to pop the boards out. This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and pretty healthy. So if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. I want to pay that treasure trove of information back so to speak, hence this post. When my wife and I go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we try to read personal blogs and reviews online to get the real story. If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch. ![]()
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