A friend is having a deck built next to his above ground pool. I was curious as to how the framing would be done, so I took a look yesterday.
The builder put a beam at an angle along the pool, put the joists and blocking on the beam and made a "curved rim joist" by cutting boards at an angle and slipping them between the ends of the joists.
Sure seems like it oughta work.
And here I thought they steamed 2X8s. ;-)
Well, I did offer to lend him my steam box...
I did something very similar about 25 years ago. An extensive back yard rose garden with decking around the curved swing and pathways. I can't tell you how many times one of the rose bushes grabbed me and held on. And yes it is a lot of work but you do have to support those curved ends of the deck boards.
They look like they are bent but all are straight.
Yeah, that would make it a lot easier. Well, aside from the cost of fuel to heat it.
This whole build is a weird situation, probably because there is "family" involved.
It's a family member that is building the deck, a patio area and a walkway, all based on the installation of the pool. The family member has built other things for this couple, such as a shed. (more on that later).
Apparently this family member isn't the type of person who presents plans when he builds something, he just talks and points. (Obviously he didn't get permit, but that's a separate issue)
So the block patio gets built next to the pool, the deck gets framed and the stairs for the deck land on the patio. The patio is not that big and the 5' wide steps land in the middle of the side near the pool and extend about
25% of the way onto the patio. They take up too much room, mess up placement of a table and chairs and create a terrible traffic pattern, basically right through the middle of people sitting on the patio, sipping a cocktail. (There will little kids running back and forth.)The owners had to tell their family member to move it off the patio. Of course, no other area near the deck (i.e. the lawn) has been prepped to support the stairs, so he has to pour a couple more footers, do a little more framing, move the already completed stairs, get them to land correctly, maybe even rebuild them to keep the risers even. Plans would have prevented this problem.
OK, back to the shed that he built for them at a different house. Since he just pointed and talked, there seems to have been some miscommunication as to which way the doors should face. The owners wanted them to face into the yard, he built it (while they were on vacation) with the doors facing the driveway. The short driveway. The driveway that required one of their cars to be parked so close to the shed that you could barely get the doors open. Plans would have prevented this issue.
I guess they didn't learn their lesson the first time. The walkway isn't built yet. I hope they make him at least draw a picture. ;-)
My fav is the pad of 11 x 17 squared paper - so easy to do a rough sketch in the field - then do a finished drawing - to scale - at the litchen table.
Not exactly the professional 3-D views that a cad-guy will produce but better than talking and pointing ! John T.
Straight 2x8s are all bent.
We have blackberry bushes at the back of our yard. Mowing back there is always a good time. I hire mowing out now, so...
One word: Sketchup
I tried it a few years ago .. but without a compelling reason to force myself to dig in & learn it .. it was tough sloggin' . I have a daughter who is an interior designer and she has taught junior college kids the cad stuff so I just avail upon her good graces. John T.
I couldn't make anything out of it until I got my head wrapped around the fact that it's not a CAD program. Its a modeling program which is sorta a CAD program, turned inside out. You draw the widget or the components of the widget, then take the dimensions from that.
For example, to make a 2x8x8, you start with a 2x8" rectangle, then grab the face and pull it out 96". Or you can take an 8x96" rectangle and stretch it 2". If you don't know how long this joist is, just pull it until it's long enough to go where you want it to go. Measure it later.
You can then copy/move to build a grid of joists, spin and move to make a beam. Then pull the sides to change the joist's dimension to size it to make the beam and its length to go from here to there. When you're done, take the dimensions of the pieces. You don't start with the dimension, rather a 3-D picture.
This took some visualization. I think it was Leon, probably ten years ago who gave me the insight to look at the problem from another direction. Once that mental breakthrough is made, the whole thing becomes obvious.
AND my most important comment when learning Sketchup. When finished with the basic design of a piece/ovject of the project, highlight all of the lines of that object, right click and choose Make Component. That step keeps other parts and lines from sticking to that part.
It certainly is helpful to have a mechanical drawing back ground. You learn to think a certain way. I have used countless drawing programs, since 1986, including AutoCAD LT. Sketchup was a bit confusing to change over to and in the early years, prior to 2008 Skechup was still crotchety.
I have been almost exclusively using Sketchup since about 2009.
One of the important things to remember is that when drawing for a project, draw the parts separately. Look at it like you are building in your shop. You don't make your parts as one piece and then cut them apart, so don't draw all of your parts together either.
Draw the part and make it into a component. This prevents the part from being deformed or changed by another part of the drawing.
My Sketchup drawings leave little to the imagination. They show all details except for screws and or Domino tenons.
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