Since the ledgerboard for our deck became detached from our house, the center part sunk. It appears to have been very poorly attached. I don’t particularly want to rebuild the entire deck. I have pulled off some of the decking surface boards closest to the house to expose the problem. I hoping to lift the fallen section of deck back up, and reattach the ledgerboard to the foundation.
I already have a 2 ton bottle jack. But I stopped up at Walmart and bought a couple more 2 ton jacks. Now that I have them, and am looking at the collapsed deck, I noticed there is little space under the frame of the deck to fit the jacks. Hmmmm. I have an idea of slipping some rope under the frame in a loop. Then I can use a 4×4 as a fulcrum, and a 2×4 as a lever. I can hook the rope over the 2×4, and maybe lift parts of the frame a bit, and stick some scrap wood under it. This way I can slowly lift the frame until I can get the jacks under it. It will be a process of trial and hopefully not too many errors!!!
Well, we have finally had some dry weather, and the deck has dried out enough that I wanted to take a look at it. I got my pry bar and hammer out, and started prying up planks. I started with the board closest to the house, where the deck is collasped.
Well, I figured out what happened, or at least part of it. It looks like there were some 2×10 board mounted to the concrete foundation. From what I can see, it looks like it was very poorly attached, using only some masonry screws, and not enough of them. I can only see a couple of them in the middle.
We have stopped for the moment. I need to remove more boards, clean up all the leaves and debris under there, and assess the situation. I think we maybe be able to jack up that side of the deck again, and then mount it more solidly to concrete foundation. Probably using more and longer masonry screws. Maybe I can use some liquid nails type stuff too. I will have to do some research, and maybe talk to the people at Home Depot & Lowes.
Interestingly, we found a dryer vent under the deck that we didn’t know about. It probably goes into the downstairs utilitie room that is set up for a washer & dryer set up, but we don’t have any in there. I am guess that the vent is where mice have been getting into the house. I will the little vent flap was in a wide open position. I pushed it closed. I will look into sealing it up.
I finally settled on using the caulk style glaze made by DAP, instead of the putty type glaze. I just don’t have the time to do the putty type glaze. And with my inexperience, it is unlikely it will look any better. So I bought a cartridge of DAP window glaze.
The weather was pretty nice yesterday, so I got start on a couple of the lower windows. I figured these would be easy to practice on, much easier than being up on the ladder. I love the angled tip on the caulk With a little practice, I was starting to get pretty good at applying the glaze. It basically just takes a steady even hand, and some patience.
The lower windows turned out pretty good. I used up most of the caulk on these two windows. So on my way to my karate class, I picked up a couple more cartridges. When I got home last night, I still had some light left. So I decided to work on the other windows. I got my ladded out, and got started. It took a while. It was harder to do while working on the ladder. They didn’t look as nice as the lower windows. They still looked okay, but the caulk glaze wasn’t as smooth in the places where I needed to step down on the ladder.
I managed to finish the last of it in the waning light.
I thought I was down, but remembered some windows out front. THey don’t have the leaking problems from blowing rain, but I figure I will do them anyway. Glazing the windows may help seal the house a little better too. Our house can use all the air sealing it can get!
Well, I did my yearly chore of lawn care. I have lots of moss on one section, lots of clover on the other section and sparse grass. That comes with a lawn surrounded by trees. I thought about buying Scott Turf Builder with Moss Control. But that wouldn’t deal with the weeds. Besides, Home Depot doesn’t seem to carry it, and I won’t be near a Lowes until tomorrow. So I decided to buy a bag of Vigoro Weed & Feed, and a bag of Moss Control stuff. I brought it home. I dumped the bag of moss control in a drop spreader (It’s the roller kind with a bar that turns). I spread that out over the lawn. The bag is good for up to 5000 square feet, and our lawn is a little over 3000. But I spread the entire bag out. Then I loaded up the weed and feed into the spreader. I started spreading that out. I spread most of it, and was concerned I might have missed some areas. It looks goofy when you have green grass everywhere, except a few spots. So I dumped the remaining weed and feed out of the roller spreader into a hand held broadcast spreader. Then I walked back and forth on the lawn cranking the little handle and spreading the weed and feed. I should set up the sprinklers, and wet down the lawn so the stuff soaks in.
During heavy blowing rain, I have some windows that leak. They have leaked since we bought the house. There is nothing to keep rain from running down the glass into the frame. Last year I got some rope caulk stuff and stuck it around the edges of the glass, but it is already peeling off. I have been planning on caulking it. But I went and did some research on the right way to do it, and found that caulking is not the right way at all. I am supposed to glaze the windows. Well, I started reading about glazing windows, and found there are a couple types of window glaze. There is the traditional putty glaze, and there is glaze that comes in a tube that fits into a caulk gun.
The putty glaze needs to be soften by rolling it in your hands. It takes more time, but applies cleaner. The caulk gun version of glaze would probably be a little easier to apply, but will be not as clean looking. The putty glaze is cheaper relative to the number of windows you can do with a tub of it. But that wasn’t a big consideration for me as the price difference wasn’t that big.
I debated about the two, and decided on the putty. It make take some extra work, but I think it will be better in the long run.