Someone gave Lee a few used electric wheelchairs to play with and he found info about what others had done to build remote controlled mowers online so he got out his wrenches & welder and went to work.
This is the same neighbour with MD that had the Spyder (perfect for him while he could still stand up but couldn't hold a 2 wheeler up). For the last couple of years he has been moving from the Spyder to 3D printing as his main hobby and the last I heard he was working on printing a robot mower from plans he got on a 3D printing forum so that he can have one in the back yard and one in the front.
I was hoping to start refurbing the RC mower over the winter but other than cleaning the dust from sitting in his garage off and rolling it into the shop so I could trip over it all winter while it gathered dust from my garage I haven't touched it yet. I'll probably end up using my riding mower at least a few times before I get to it now...
I'm using 5/4 x 6 pressure treated lumber for the decking. Yes. I know about how much better the plastic lumber is for things like that but it costs soooo much more (up to 5x the cost for the decking plus you have to use special fastening systems that are a lot more expensive than deck screws) that I couldn't make myself even consider it seriously.
There's no secret to getting the boards straight. Just about any web page you look at or video you watch about building a deck will tell you to buy spacers that you put between the board you just screwed down and the one you are about to screw down.
But you all know how selectively cheap I am. If I expected to do more than one deck in my lifetime I might have invested in a set of them (they aren't terribly expensive) but I figure if this deck lasts as long as what it is replacing I'll be 93 before it needs to be replaced and not likely to do it myself even if I am still capable of looking after myself in my own home.
I calculated that 16 boards with 3/8" spacing would fit the wide part of the deck and 13 boards on the narrow end. The original plan was to cut pieces of 3/8" plywood with notches to sit over the joists (sort of half H shaped) but I decided it would be hard to pull them out from between the planking so I started looking for something else 3/8" thick. The LED light fixtures I've been installing throughout the house all included fixture bars with nipples & nuts that I didn't need because I mounted them directly to octagonal boxes and the nipples used in lighting are nominally 3/8" diameter so I assembled a couple of them like this and they made perfect spacers.
As you can see from this pic, the spacing isn't perfectly even all the way on every board because there is always some warping in some boards and I only used a spacer at each end of the board. But the average spacing is uniform enough that when I got to the last 4 rows of planking there was only 1/8" difference in the distance between the plank and the bricks. By installing the remaining rows tight to the spacers on one end and looser on the other end the remaining space for the last row was the same all the way down. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough room for full width planks there (if I had known I could have filed the threads down on the nipples to make the spacers 9/32" instead of 3/8" - ain't hindsight great?) so we had to rip them down to a bit over 4" wide. I don't feel too bad about that because it is what most deck building instructions say to do anyway.
I needed couple more of 2x4s and a couple of 2x4 joist hangers for the railing's inside corner and Kay had to go to somewhere else near the building supply yesterday so I went with her and we did a couple of other errands on the way (all necessary - we rarely go out just for the fun of it and usually try to combine errands so the only thing that has changed is that she always waits in the car while I wait in lines to get into go into stores while wearing a mask). By the time we got home the sun was shining on the wrong side of the house and it was only about 7c near the deck so I only put in an hour and a half before I quit and came inside to see why the dryer wasn't working.
Now I have to see if I can get the parts to repair a 26 year old appliance or if we are going to have to replace it.
And some people are getting bored....
This is the same neighbour with MD that had the Spyder (perfect for him while he could still stand up but couldn't hold a 2 wheeler up). For the last couple of years he has been moving from the Spyder to 3D printing as his main hobby and the last I heard he was working on printing a robot mower from plans he got on a 3D printing forum so that he can have one in the back yard and one in the front.
I was hoping to start refurbing the RC mower over the winter but other than cleaning the dust from sitting in his garage off and rolling it into the shop so I could trip over it all winter while it gathered dust from my garage I haven't touched it yet. I'll probably end up using my riding mower at least a few times before I get to it now...
I'm using 5/4 x 6 pressure treated lumber for the decking. Yes. I know about how much better the plastic lumber is for things like that but it costs soooo much more (up to 5x the cost for the decking plus you have to use special fastening systems that are a lot more expensive than deck screws) that I couldn't make myself even consider it seriously.
There's no secret to getting the boards straight. Just about any web page you look at or video you watch about building a deck will tell you to buy spacers that you put between the board you just screwed down and the one you are about to screw down.
But you all know how selectively cheap I am. If I expected to do more than one deck in my lifetime I might have invested in a set of them (they aren't terribly expensive) but I figure if this deck lasts as long as what it is replacing I'll be 93 before it needs to be replaced and not likely to do it myself even if I am still capable of looking after myself in my own home.
I calculated that 16 boards with 3/8" spacing would fit the wide part of the deck and 13 boards on the narrow end. The original plan was to cut pieces of 3/8" plywood with notches to sit over the joists (sort of half H shaped) but I decided it would be hard to pull them out from between the planking so I started looking for something else 3/8" thick. The LED light fixtures I've been installing throughout the house all included fixture bars with nipples & nuts that I didn't need because I mounted them directly to octagonal boxes and the nipples used in lighting are nominally 3/8" diameter so I assembled a couple of them like this and they made perfect spacers.
As you can see from this pic, the spacing isn't perfectly even all the way on every board because there is always some warping in some boards and I only used a spacer at each end of the board. But the average spacing is uniform enough that when I got to the last 4 rows of planking there was only 1/8" difference in the distance between the plank and the bricks. By installing the remaining rows tight to the spacers on one end and looser on the other end the remaining space for the last row was the same all the way down. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough room for full width planks there (if I had known I could have filed the threads down on the nipples to make the spacers 9/32" instead of 3/8" - ain't hindsight great?) so we had to rip them down to a bit over 4" wide. I don't feel too bad about that because it is what most deck building instructions say to do anyway.
I needed couple more of 2x4s and a couple of 2x4 joist hangers for the railing's inside corner and Kay had to go to somewhere else near the building supply yesterday so I went with her and we did a couple of other errands on the way (all necessary - we rarely go out just for the fun of it and usually try to combine errands so the only thing that has changed is that she always waits in the car while I wait in lines to get into go into stores while wearing a mask). By the time we got home the sun was shining on the wrong side of the house and it was only about 7c near the deck so I only put in an hour and a half before I quit and came inside to see why the dryer wasn't working.
Now I have to see if I can get the parts to repair a 26 year old appliance or if we are going to have to replace it.
And some people are getting bored....