Pre-Deck Construction Preparations

Here we have the preparations for a pt (pressure treated) deck underway. The vinyl siding has been removed from the lower portion of the walls to allow for the deck to be properly anchored to the exterior of the house with a 2″ wide pt ledger-board such as the ones lying on the gravel in front of the french-doors in the picture.

Those french-doors, by the way, are a beautiful solid pine 6′ wide series from Andersen. Also notice the black strips below the 2 Andersen doors. Before the doors were installed ice-and-water moisture barrier was applied to the rough openings of the doors, taking care to lay over the Tyvek underlayment to provide maximum protection against moisture and the elements.

Gravel aggregate, a few inches thick, has been spread on the ground under where the deck will sit. Laying down some gravel is particularly important when you are building a deck that will sit close to the ground such as this one will. The layer of gravel aggregate will help in preventing plant growth and moisture build-up underneath the deck.

The 4′ concrete footings that will support the weight of deck will be poured into those yellow sona tubes you see in the ground. Sona tubes are great for giving you a strong consistent structure for your footings. Why 4′ deep? Here in New England you have to get below the frost line with any sort of base-structural support, such as our concrete footings for the deck. Going this deep prevents the footing from shifting and cracking, insuring a long life or your new deck.

Lastly, we have the trench located in front of the main row of sona tubes in the picture. This will provide for the long concrete landing that we will be pouring for the stairs coming off the deck. This customer wanted long steps going the entire length of the deck. It was a lot of concrete for a landing, but it sure did look good when it was done, as you will see.

Next up: Framing the deck.

Here you can see the exterior of the addition. The lumber materials you see on the ground are for the deck we were about to begin construction on that would surround the addition.

Now if you can look at this picture as three separate structures, you will see the original house on the left, the original garage on the right, and the new kitchen addition in the middle with the two french doors. Before the addition the garage and the house were separate structures. We tied them together with the new addition. You would never know. Everything went seamlessly.

Notice the two small windows that are located above the roof line of the addition. They were not part of the original design of the addition. Originally there were two full size windows located there. The customer, however, decided that they wanted to extend the original distance that the addition would come out from the existing back wall of the house. Of course by do that it meant that the height at which the roof met the back wall of the house was increased. A flat roof was not an option here, so as a result we replaced the full size windows with the small rolling windows you see pictured to allow for the increased height in the roof. The customer was happy so we were happy.

Up next is the exterior pine deck that wraps the new addition, finishing off the project.

This is a close-up of the kitchen island at the Franklin kitchen addition, already being used as you can see. You can see the breakfast-bar on the backside of the island. The kitchen island as well as the rest of the cabinetry features dark granite countertop surfaces. The sink as well as the dishwasher are also located within the island.

As I mentioned in the previous article, this island is highly customized. The customer had chosen maple cabinetry and we used maple plywood to enclose the back and sides of this island. You remember that 2″x6″ frame sitting in the middle of the room in part 1 of this series? That is what we used to create the breakfast bar and run our rough electric and plumbing through.

We are done with the interior of the kitchen at this point. The hardwood flooring has been installed and finished. It’s a bit in the distance, but, if you look at the doorway on the left side you will notice the tie-in area that I had mentioned in the last post regarding the hardwood flooring. It matched beautifully.

This is a unique almost minimalist design with regards to the cabinetry and island layout. Most of our kitchen remodels usually involve custom cabinetry, however, the budget on this project didn’t allow for that. These cabinets were ordered as standard sized base and wall units from one of our pre-built cabinet manufactures and offered considerable savings over our custom cabinetry offerings. The center island is heavily customized and I will discuss that in the next article.

You will notice a large post and beam in the middle of the room. We removed almost half of the back wall of the 1st floor of the house and replaced it with laminated beams after we had built the addition that extended the kitchen out into the backyard.

Here you can see the hardwood flooring partially installed. On this project we were going to be tying our new hardwood floor in with an existing hardwood floor. They met in a wide opening between the new kitchen area and an existing hallway. For this reason we did not go with a pre-finished hardwood flooring product, we finished it post installation to achieve the best possible match with the existing floor.

You will also notice a rough 2″x6″ frame in the middle of the room. As you will see in an upcoming post, this frame allowed for the creation of a raised area of the kitchen island that serves as a “breakfast bar” type area. Notice the rough plumbing withing the frame as well. By putting the rough plumbing there, as opposed to up-through the base-cabinet unit that would house the sink, it allowed for more storage area underneath the sink.

At this stage we are about halfway done with this project. Sorry, no pictures before this point.

Here is a great picture of clear-spanning roof frame trusses. What clear-spanning means is that the trusses span from one side of the structure to the other. There are no support posts to get in the way anywhere within the room the way that there would have been if we had gone with a beam to support ceiling joists.

Trusses are great for creating a space that is wide open with no visible support posts. They also don’t typically cost more than a traditional ceiling-joist/roof-rafter style framing technique. The reason is that 1 truss replaces 2 roof rafters and at least 1 ceiling joist. Also when using trusses you avoid the need for a ridge-beam and a support beam(s) and post(s) for the ceiling joists.

Because of the typically large nature of trusses sometimes a crane is required to install them, however this cost is still usually offset by the quick installation of the entire roof system.

With many styles of roof trusses you will lose some or all of the attic space that you would of otherwise had with traditional framing techniques. Most truss manufactures can, however, offer solutions that will still give you a usable attic. These truss systems may cost a bit more but usually not prohibitively.

This is the backside of the Bellingham addition. This particular project I designed to bump out on the back and be slightly recessed in the front.

On this job we were responsible for the plans and engineering, the foundation, the framing, window installs, and the roofing. This was a fairly straightforward job, just a square structure with dimensions of 28′x28′. One highlight of the project was clear-spanning roof framing utilizing engineered trusses. I will show an image of those and discuss them in the next post.

This is garage addition we did for a family in Bellingham, Massachusetts. As you can tell the frame is complete and you can see Mike up on the roof applying ice-and-water barrier to the edge of the plywood roof in preparation for asphalt roofing shingles. Ice-and-water acts as a protective barrier for… you guessed it, ice and water. This is especially important here in New England. What can happen during cold winters is that ice can melt from higher areas of the roof and the water will travel down the roof. This water will often refreeze and cause ice-dams on the lower edges of the roof planes(eaves). This barrier will help to protect the roof in case the ice dams are able to penetrate below the shingles. A responsible roofing contractor in the North East will ALWAYS use ice-and-water barrier on the eaves and valleys to add extra weather protection to your home.