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Fix Your Old Deck Frame and Save Money! | Deck Restoration

Mar 08, 2024
So you removed all the boards from

your

deck

and you're left with a DIY framing nightmare and I'm going to show you in this video how to fix

your

structure so you can repair it and not have to start all over again. So let's talk very quickly about the structural

frame

work for outdoor terraces and there are two types of terraces that you can build, one is where it really has a structure and foundation and is attached to the house, which when attached to the building and all the posts that they go to the ground they are on a base that goes below the frost line if you have one in your area or it is on something solid that will not be in direct contact with the ground so it doesn't cause rot and premature fall of your

deck

in this situation , this DIY homeowner who built this deck did a combination of both and you see this all the time, people think it's a really good idea to hook it up to the house and then just putting some 4x4 posts in the ground will compact it a little, maybe it's all a mess, so we have all kinds of movement in the middle, it's almost completely sunken out of sight and I'll leave this here so you guys have a quick look, there's a one inch gap over four feet and a half here and this is already the lower part of the platform when I go and put my level like this.
fix your old deck frame and save money deck restoration
I'm looking at my club, my hand with the whole hole underneath, here it is. a five foot level, sorry, six feet, it's an 8 foot platform and you get an idea of ​​how dramatic the drop in the middle is here we can also see that in that corner over there they didn't know how to level everything towards the outside so that it is attached to the house and the last foot and a half is attached to the post and the post is buried. You can see that going down the row of bricks here are the most visible and dramatic words.
fix your old deck frame and save money deck restoration

More Interesting Facts About,

fix your old deck frame and save money deck restoration...

It's OK now. build on your concrete step, you can use this as a

frame

, that's not a problem, it's not okay to put an edge beam on it and then use it as hanging lumber for the next piece of beams, this is still only attached to two screws. a 2x4 in that corner and a couple of screws that went in four at a time here, so when that post falls, the whole deck falls with it and it creates a real mess and you can see everything falling, of course , the rear end here is starting to stick out now the screws are coming loose everything is starting to rot an absolute mess of course nothing is square but what we can do in this situation is come up with a strategy to restore this frame so we can put a deck surface back on top now the only thing the homeowner who built this did right is he has his joists on a 16 inch center so we might as well start with that, we're not too worried about it being out of square because the original deck, although it was not visibly square to the house, did not appear to be square to the sun, so if you really want to save your deck structure, what you want to do is figure out where all the load is and this is what I mean, since All the points of this platform are in the middle under this post.
fix your old deck frame and save money deck restoration
This carries most of the weight, even when you walk here, all the weight is transferred to these beams across the platform up to this point, so every step. What's needed is to push this into the ground, so what we want to do right away is remove it because it's less than 8 feet here and this is attached to the house, if we can make this front ridge stable and sit on blocks floating so it doesn't move. It doesn't sink anymore, so I can put in a new piece of wood and go the whole distance. Well, by using proper beam supports, I'll be able to get another 20 or 30 years out of this before it starts to sink any more, and even if it does sink, it's a really simple solution is to raise the deck and put some shim underneath to level it out. again.
fix your old deck frame and save money deck restoration
I know it's not perfect, but let's face it here in the real world, when you get a lemon, you have to find a way to make lemonade, so this is what we're going to do today, the only other thing we're going to change besides that is that we are going to lift that back corner. I'm going to show you tips and tricks so you can just cut, lift and reinstall and you're done. I'm not going to have to tear this whole thing apart and throw it in the landfill. I would rather have a platform that is 90% structurally sound and then start over with a new investment, all that time, all that waste, all that tree in the trash just doesn't make any sense.
The bottom line is that Dex will go to the trash sooner or later. What you want to do is find a way to build it so that it is strong, safe and enjoyable for a reasonable period of time based on your investment. Here we are. We're going to resurface by putting up some nice railings, we just need to shore this up, so we'll get another 20 or 30 years out of it before it's completely out of use and I think we can do that. Pay attention. I will show you. All my tips and tricks, so before we start cutting this up and repairing it, I just wanted to talk real quick about the basic framing technology and the options that are available on the market to help extend the life of a deck.
One of them is construction tape. This is basically like a very thick tar paper, it's self-adhesive and the idea is that when you put it on top of the joists and wrap the sides, you can see when we remove this pallet and you can see the effect. These are the spaces. that are between the boards, okay, generally speaking, that's not water damage, but here you can see that this is where the boards were joined, and that's complete garbage now if you're building your deck and you're making a spine of fish or a picture frame. and your boxing and adding extra wood and you'll have cut ends like this, this was a cedar deck and even the cedar will rot on you and having all that exposed wet organic material stuck there all the time, that's your enemy so if you don't you're going to be the type of person that takes the time to pressure wash all the joints and clean them all the time and then use something as a kind of deck guard and it will help stretch the length of the deck.
The other thing we "I'm going to use head locking screws here. I love this technology. These things are amazing because they replace the strength of a 3h galvanized lag bolt and allow me to give structural strength to each piece of wood I'm joining together." I don't rely on nails or screws for enough cut resistance, I can be creative with my repairs, and I can support the full weight of an entire family here without any risk to their safety, so fasten your seat belts. here we go there we go, let's see it's already a huge improvement just getting rid of that stupid wedge.
I think when I look at this, the concept of having the 2x4 sleepers on top of the concrete pad is sound. I don't like. The fact that these two-by-fours come out here and stop and are not attached to this ridge plate, except probably for some nails. It seems like these nails are in everything, except now I see screws here. Only I can. I'm not sure of anything. Wow, the plan is that this 2x6 needs to be adequately reinforced on each end so that the wood it is attached to will actually support the weight that this 2x6 is transferring right now.
There are two deck screws over here and there are a couple of nails on the 4x4 post here. I can see which is interesting. The screws only hold 80 pounds each. It is a terrible shear resistance material for a deck frame because the screws will break over time, especially near the front entry area because people use salt. when they have ice in the winter and the salt corrodes, that's why we had problems with a lot of the screws here tearing out the deck boards, so we're going to put a proper beam support in here. Get some proper structural screws in there as well and then I think what I want to do is cut this out so I can keep it as a two by six and I can attach it with new beams from here from this post all the way to the end. the house and we'll get rid of all this clutter in the middle and then I can use a rafter hanger and tie this two by six and at least that's going to straighten out my deck, get rid of this arch and once I've figured this out and I'll do the same.
I'm going to remember this whole two-by-six beam assembly here. I do not have any other option. I mean, probably the only other thing I can do is cut this one off and remove it. this hanger and then put another beam here and then lift this whole thing into place, that's probably the best we're going to come up with and that will transfer all my load and eliminate the center post, both of them completely. so the only place I will have repair problems will be on the perimeter because I don't want to have to crawl under the deck, I will never have access in the future, but if we use the right type of skirting, we can always have access to repairs on the post on the outside, so we'll make a couple of cuts, put in a couple of new boards, straighten it all out, and then show you how to fix the other one. above the side frame, so the irony is in the idea of ​​the way it was built, the longest timber used here was eight feet long and you can see the edge on the other side, the last beam, there is a complete piece of wood and that is the only one. full piece of wood in this entire build except the 2x4, the other end, everything else in the middle was cut out.
I'm not sure why it was necessary. I think originally they probably should have stopped here, but the pole brought in a full beam. wide and I joined them at that point and all of these could have been full beams if they had received delivery of the longer lumber, all of this would have been avoided so I'll jump right into this, this beam is 16 inches on center. it's not in the perfect spot, so what I'm going to do is use this as my guide to line up with this and I'm going to cut this piece right on that edge, so if that's my job, wow, that's it. there really is a way out, you gotta love it, basically all I'm going to do, I'm just going to mark it with a screw here real quick, so now I have my place where I'm going to cut and once I've cut this, I'm also going to remove this and this and the post and then I'll put in a new 2 by 6 with the beam support and transfer this load now that we're not transferring a lot of load over a lot of space.
I know traditionally I would like to duplicate them, but let's be honest, these decks have been here for 20 years and in this condition they were still helping to keep people safe and out of the dirt, so if we rebuilt them in a similar way with better technology, it would we'll get another 20. years of all the weight of sinking this into the ground this is actually under pressure from being bent and it's popped up now that the pressures are gone that's amazing okay and likewise this 16 inch line here we're going to want to To keep that as well, this 2 by 6 piece so we don't have to replace the entire cart area, we're going to cut this one out as well since it's going to be removed any way other than a structural nail, why not ? surprised all the way to the deck, this entire assembly is on one roofing nail, just total incompetence.
Amazing, you know there's a time and place to save

money

when you're building something, but when you rely on these fasteners to do everything. Structural transportation you can't really afford to go and wow, don't buy it right now, so you're in the store buying a hanger, pick up the structural screws, they may come in a box, they look like this, they have the bit in the box . It's really not that difficult. 10 dollars can save someone from serious injury. You'll notice that when I'm cutting with this, I'm actually rocking it back and forth, it's a reciprocating motion, it means the blades shoot in and out of the housing, but at the end of the day, there's so much bounce that the more you move the saw, the passive effect occurs, yes, that should not be able to be done like that.
What do we have here? Hey hey, finishing the nails, I love it now. someone called screws on the other some of them are galvanized some of them are not someone building this with a jar or fasteners whatever they picked up they used is amazing so a lot of connections are made here there are eight beam supports. intermittently thrown around how many at the other end of the beam support is a piece of wood that is glued with the skirting screws or Oh, God only knows, finishing nails, why bother putting in the hardware so that these boards They're really in the shape that You don't need this and this, this is where most of the joints of the original deck boards went.
Yeah, when it comes apart that easy, let me guess, we have some more of those really awesome screws. Here's a tip if you get a meal and it's all soft and weak and you can't hammer it, put it on its side, now turn it this way, you can take it out the other side, so now you have an idea what I'm talking about. I have all this. clean, okay, I put my whole hand under here, but when we put our new piece of wood that spans the entire space and I lift it up to the floor joist, BAM, my whole platform will be level, it's not level yet, but in thispoint all the load. it goes from the wall to the outside edge and then it's just a matter of fixing those few spots, we'll be ready to go, we'll just throw a There's no second pair of hands, that's what I like to call it.
I'm going to swing. this one around set it up and this is how I'm going to measure so I know I'm perfectly level and I know this isn't square so I'm going to take both measurements I'm going to take my monster trying to get it wrong here we go so when you're building a deck, you don't always have the luxury of having the right tool for the right job and as a homeowner, if you have a hand saw, you have everything you need to make the frame.plus one of these, so what I do is that I can use this as my guard, so I'm going to set the depth of my sword and this creates that space on my plate, okay, so I can run over this, yeah, I do.
Okay, so what I do is I hold this against my wood. I hold the SOB plate against the triangle and I can run until my blade is exactly where I want it to turn back on and run the saw against my triangle. I have pinched it into place with my hand, that is a technique to cut all the dimensional wood. You don't have to use the circular saw so you can have the saw with you with your triangle and you can run around your deck making all your cuts and cutting them on the spot boom boom boom boom flip them over and screw them in and I'll save you a lot of running around. across to a stationary saw like this now let's put my vise in the corner there's my second pair of hands again and I can just slide this in and put it on the rail behind slide it into place okay we're just going to place this flush with the front rail, drive in one screw, so 2x6 requires one screw for every two inches, that's your basic. concept, each screw has 80 pounds of structural strength attached to it for absolute strength, that's 240 pounds of screw on each end when you use deck screws, now here we're going to end up using our joist brackets, which are crazy.
We're talking about a couple of thousand pounds of very little

money

. Let's do the same here. Classic example of an owner who built the deck. He didn't know what he was doing, but he was close. You know, there's a lot that was done here. something resembling the right thing with some saveable edits, remember every time you're disappointed with something, if you just throw it all away and start over, that's a lot of trash and then today's world throws things away For the sake of posterity, I think it's irresponsible, so if you don't like what you have, fix it, don't throw it away now, that's almost perfect, except this corner is a little low and all our fronts are a little low, so now We have our flat structure, we'll call it and we have one, two, three, four, five points where all the wood is sitting on the ground and that's what we're going to fix next because we really don't want them to be sitting in the dirt, so all What we have to do is cut them off at the bottom and then we'll lift up the whole platform, put down some stone dust and a concrete block that we can put it on and we'll be absolutely fine.
I think it's important. It should be noted here that this two-by-six is ​​doing most of the work when it comes to carrying the load back and forth for everything that goes through the middle and this post really doesn't have much structural importance at the moment, so I'm going to release it so the front end can rise at best. I'm probably going to scab a little 2x4 in there just for stability, but since the deck has a propensity to sink and not rise up, I don't have a problem crusting it and just give me a little extra strength, obviously, I don't think that be really meaningful when a guy doesn't even take his welcome mat off the step, yeah honey, when he builds the deck, he ain't no poor congri.
No way no foundation or concrete or anything just dig a hole, stick it in the ground and let the clay and frost do the rest. Now the idea here is to raise the deck and level it when you are building a deck structure, you will also think about water removal, this front step has a slope away from the house, so any water that passes over the deck It will just go underground. Are you here? The rest of this platform is perfectly fine. The boards will go from left to right, so there is a gap between each board for water to be removed.
We don't need to maintain any kind of slope here, so we'll try to raise them until they're perfectly level. Here is our temporary support. which makes our gap, yeah, three inches, that's pretty intense. It is important to note that in our region check your local building code, but any structure like this that we build in our region that is less than twenty-four inches does not have a building code, so there are no rules for you to do it. a platform complete with popsicle sticks if you want, but only so he can sleep at night. I like to use some intelligence, some structural fasteners, a little bit of science, but you know legally, but this other owner did it, there's nothing wrong with it, so it was lousy, but it wasn't bad because he's not a legal stranger.
I'm putting some limestone projections in here just so I can level this out and then I'll pour a concrete slab. The idea here is that I want to, yes, understand that. block right there perfect folks if I'm 1/8th of a degree off the level I'll be perfectly happy with that which is structurally sound throw this on our new piece of wood that goes straight from one side to the other and this time I'm going to take a marker. I want to mark my post at the level I like. Well, I'll also come out on this side and take a look over here and see if we're in relatively the same place.
That looks good, yeah, so I'm going to take it up here this time, lift it up to my line and then about an eighth of an inch that way once I'm done putting all my aggregate in here. I'll be able to put it back into place on our screen. Look at this all the way to my forever line, so with this I'm basically making a ferrule knowing that I put enough screws into this block and it's basically six. I have 500 pounds of pure force in this corner, so I would have to get six adults between that wall in this corner and between here and here jumping up and down with all their strength simultaneously before we would risk being hung up high. under a structural failure, pretty sure We're not going to end up with that kind of scenario, okay, these are really great for leveling things, they buy in the order of peak blinders, so my favorite technique for installing a joist support and this one is a two by six, it means the hanger is a little bit shorter than the material I'm using, okay, push it so it's close and then you can force it open.
You know they have these tabs here, so once it's seated on the bottom, would you use that tab and it comes like a little nail prong that keeps it in place once it's in place. Can you come now. You no longer need to have three hands. Now these screws are an inch and a half, which is perfect for this scenario that you will never have. Screw into the wood and take your legs, which is important to keep in mind because you can buy longer ones and if you do it by accident, people have been known to throw a screw into their knee before when making a beam hanger.
Through these small holes is a screw that is designed to attach the bracket to the edge of the deer or its beam. This is designed to prevent this piece of material from separating from the bracket so it doesn't fall off the seat, especially if you're building a deck and you're using technology like this and you're getting inspections, make sure you're using the proper fastener, this is the number ten ok this is really great for outdoors and this is not a coated screw it meets acq standards but it is not a kota screw it is an alloy it is forged it will never rust not like galvanized nails no like the acq screws that will never rust and if you are not using a forged alloy in your Simpson Strong Tie, you will not pass inspection and sooner or later, one of these days it will just fall apart, the pressure treated copper and the tree wood a pressure is what caused the rust that kills the screw, so the coating only protects it for a while, that's why when it comes to structure We deal with point loads, we deal with brackets, we deal with forged screws, those elements They will never rust and will never fail.
I mean, all the boards can rise up and rot and that's okay, you're not going to fall through your deck there. you know, we've basically rebuilt our deck, we've taken care of all our point loads, we've got our new joists packed, we've got joist supports everywhere, we've put some new head locking screws through the plate in the wall just to strengthen it. things because it looked a little soft here on the side, it has a 2x4 that carries our load. This really isn't right, but what we're going to do is transfer all of our charging points on this front. the deck from the frame to the porch using the cedar move technique, so the reality is that our weight-bearing beam package here is only three and a half feet long, so it's not a big concern that we're using a slightly smaller number there. what's there and rebuilding that means destroying everything and no one is in the mood for that.
These covers have now been here for 20 years and no one has had an accident. It's kind of funny because here we have this beautiful 2 by 6 area that looks like it used scraps to do the job, it's got two of them cut out here and a little piece in the middle, this isn't going to cut it folks when you're doing something like this on a wall using a 1 foot piece, it's probably fine when you're doing it on the floor. I really want to laminate most of the board if not all of it and then here's the key every six inches you want to go from high to low to high like Big W is across the entire length of the board that's going to give you the strength to a triangle can't bend if it's joined together that way, this is how we do it from top to bottom to top, hmmm, ten bolts of 80 pounds each, 800 pounds, that's not going anywhere anymore, so now No. just flat, oh I love it, you know, when you come down here you call a person like that, you almost go through the last option at the last second, we get together and we get in touch, that's absolutely sexy.
I don't think we could have done it that well. a job with new wood this is a bit excessive, true, the reality is that three of these screws will hold the entire platform. These replaced the strength of a 3/8 galvanized bolt, meaning I don't have to drill, tap a bolt, and throw a washer. and a nut and then tighten it all together. I can just drag this around with my impact driver and I'll be structurally sound forever. These things cost about three to four dollars per screw, but if you ask me, I think it's worth the last step. you want to take care of and this is really simple you're going to have your outside ridge plate and you want to create a nice level surface on the top and bottom front so there are two advantages to having this piece of wood down here. have a skirt that you can put on and it's flush when we put in our posts for our railing system, we don't have to surface mount it, we don't have to rely on just the first four or five inches of wood here to screw in, we can cut our posts to get here so I can fix it here in the middle and with the top rail that creates three points of contact that makes the entire platform so strong that no one will.
I will never ever be able to fall through the railing like I did when we started the job okay so let's talk about the deck there's our surface we want a 42 inch deck railing okay and in our design we would love that have our pole just a little. a little bit taller than our actual one, so we have room for a decorative LED light at the top of this corner and in this corner, so to accomplish that task, this here is a 2 by 4 on the floor, okay , below, so it will be. made like a tea, like this, and this part will have the pre-drilled holes for the axles going down, so we have this 2x4, we have this two by four and then a five-quarter board on top of that even more and that. you get the LED surface of your drink so we want to add all that five quarters of an inch and a half okay and then that's our mark forty two boom we're going to add two more forty four so we'll go forty four inches above. the surface of the platform here, which is an inch and a quarter, okay because it's also an inch and a quarter until we get to the frame, we have to remember that and then we want to enter the frame that takes us to forty-five and a quarter, no, We bought eight. foot posts, okay, so an eight foot post if we cut it in half is 48, that's justgives us an extension of about three and a half inches, we don't go down to the next rail at the bottom, it's not the end of the world, but I.
I'd really like to do that where the railing joins, so what we're going to do is this: we're going to do the math for the middle railing here, buna 4x4, okay, cross with this, okay, so our 44 will come here. 44 - interesting to quote half and - five and a quarter which takes us to sugar two and three quarters of forty four is forty one quarter okay for that middle post and then we'll add the 504 inches on top of that to get into the frame of the platform and then this one will be long enough to reach the bottom, so if our main intersection points on the railing and in the corner can be really buried, that's amazing, so we'll cut the first one at forty-one and fourth and it will be four here shoe and the balance we will use here and we will place it at the right height and hopefully it will be deep enough, there is some work here, okay, so I can put a screw in.
That's where I wanted to sit height-wise, and I can find my spot, so without even laying down a level, just to start, when you're building the frame, right before you start building the deck, make sure you lay down the structural posts. place and my structural, I mean a railing structure, the idea here is that we want to know exactly what we are going to do, how we cut our eight foot wooden posts, this one is a little over eight feet long , what I do is I just take some miles off my order. I like to visualizeThe space is basically the height of that railing plus an inch because you want to keep some space down there so things stay nice and dry, then there's another two by four and then a five-quarter board that leaves us with almost three inches of piece. which is perfect for the LED cap, usually those lights are only about an inch above the top and that will give everything a nice, clean, taut look and then the shorter pole will just be brought in here somewhere in the middle when we enter.
That kind of math is part of the railing design, so we'll talk about that a little bit later, but what we want to do is just make a mental note that this is going to be the height that our center post will come out. platform up to this point, okay, that's not higher. I know we're just doing framing, but I'm going to show you a little trick here while you're building your deck that's going to help make your railings look neat because you want to have a lot of consistency with the spaces, so what we're going to do is take our two rails from the shaft and we'll just snap them into place.
Now the idea is that it comes from one side flush and from the other. flush side and immediately because they are pre-drilled from the factory the spacing from the first axis post is exactly the same and this is where the intersection will occur so I have a four foot section on the right so this is on my Center now visually if that's my center and I put my four by four studs inside that corner of the frame. Okay, I'm going to this post. I'm going to have a quarter inch and here my shaft needs to be cut in half, that's it. stupid, so what we're going to do is move here to this location where I have from the corner here to about two inches from the corner here I did this about two inches which is now my location, it's perfect and I'm going to measure from the post to the bundle of my choice, it's just over an inch, now I can move everything out of my way now that I have my number, the irony is that to make this perfectly square I want to be an inch away from my Choosing the beginning of my wood , which is right next to all my structural screws, is not a pleasant surprise, so this is where my post will go and it will be nice and tight.
What I'm doing here is not relying on screws. through the edge plate to hold the post, you will find that these things love to twist over time, don't forget that when the cedar grows, the cedar grows like this, that's okay, when you cut it it wants to untangle, that's why it always They twist when you place it. on a pole, even if it's overnight, you have to have a top rail attached, screw it all down temporarily and make sure it doesn't let you touch the whist because you'll go out in the morning and be like a candy cane rig, what?
This gives me a lot more support because now when there is pressure or force on the railing here for hours, it gets leverage here and then the bottom inside the platform wants to go in that direction, so by placing this block here in a The restricted ability of the bottom of that pole to swing towards the platform makes the top of the platform much stronger, so now when I'm pulling on this, I'm not only pulling on the top, but also I am creating. There is a force at the bottom of this post that goes inward, but with that lock there I don't have to rely on the threads of these screws to keep it in place.
I also have the shear strength screws that go inside the two by six here at three different points help hold it all together and the reason I've included this post and railing block configuration in the framing video is because if you don't attach the rails and lock them before placing the deck on the The only option you have left is to notch them and hang them on the side where they break easily. You could use that fancy post cap and screw it on and screw it on and that's all well and good in some scenarios, but this is actually going to be a railing and there's actually going to be people coming and going and safety is a concern here because there's going to be two stairs, so that we want to make sure that all of this is as rigid as humanly possible and that everything is part of the structure, so we are I'm going to finish this and then it will be time to start putting up the deck boards.

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