DIY Deck

[BigV]

So I bought a stack of real deck boards and pinned them in place.

I started with the centerline. That post is in the center of the roof, and close to the center of the deck. Close, only because some of the edges of the deck got built around the immovable, roof supporting posts. I wanted the center of the deckboards to line up with the center of the deck. On my first attempt I put the leading corner of the deckboard on the center frame member--bad idea. You can see I put extra frame members on each side of the center to provide nailing surfaces for the width of the deckboards. I spaced them apart by the thickness of the fence of my speedsquare, both the ends and the sides. I also have a nice digital angle finder I used to precisely line up the boards. Once lined up I used two single nails to layout the boards. I did several this way to find out how they would look and to see how they'd affect the outer sections. The "arrows" will all be parallel to each other, but if the first "arrow" isn't parallel to the centerline of the deck and the edges of the deck, by the time I'm out at the corners, one side will be long and one side will be short.