Another segment of our Yosemite trip

These pictures were taken on our second day at Yosemite National Park.  We traveled some long twisty roads to get here.  Route 49 from Angel Camp to Mariposa was a narrow twisty road that made me so nervous.  At one point I asked Justin if he thought the level part above us was an old railroad bed and then I hit the hairpin turn and found out that that was the road above us and not an old railroad.  There are no guard rails along this road either.  I wish I had gotten a picture of some of it.
Here is the link to the pictures of the giant Sequoia trees in the Mariposa Grove at Yosemite National Park.
https://picasaweb.google.com/111472392053516289027/MariposaGroveYosemiteNationalPark2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCPrQ8tXIgZTP4QE#

Yosemite National Park, August 2013

The last week of August we flew out to California to visit with Justin and Stacy for a couple of days.  They had just moved into their apartment the week before, and Justin had just come home from a deployment, so, we wanted to see them before school started so we left New York on Wednesday and arrived in California Wednesday night. Had one delay because of bad weather in Denver, CO.  Thursday was just a lazy day, didn't do a whole lot of anything.  Friday we left and drove south to go to Yosemite National Park.  We had to go further out of our way because of a quickly growing forest fire that has now turned into the an historic fire.  We spent the day Friday in Yosemite Valley seeing the sights.  We drove many hours and miles Friday night to the town of Angel Camp to stay in a motel so we didn't have too far to drive Saturday to the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite to see the giant Sequoia trees.  Here is the first of several links to pictures that I took at Yosemite.

https://picasaweb.google.com/111472392053516289027/YosemiteNationalPark2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCICwhdXdyKOSAQ#

Finished Product

This morning we woke to pouring rain.  We still had a few things to do, but about noon it started to clear and we were able to get started with the final few things that needed to be done.  I got a birthday present last night, it was an electric circular saw.  The  battery ones were just not quite powerful enough to get through the heavy wet pressure treated wood.  Anyway, we got the rail on the set of stairs on this side of the deck.  That was the final thing to do.  If you look closely, you can see Jeffrey and Chris sitting on the deck.  Chris is waving and so happy that we are all done. 

 Not sure what Jeffrey is up to in this picture, but I think he is admiring the great work that Chris and I did this week!

 This is the set of stairs that we built this morning.  Last night we laid out the 2 x 10s and drew the lines for cutting the risers, so as soon as the rain quit and the sun shone, we got busy with the new saw and got them cut and they fit perfectly.  So that was my sister's and my vacation.

Friday's Progress

 The deck is completed.  Today we put the rail all around the deck except at the pool side.  It was a real task cutting all of the posts.  Once they were done, everything else went rather rapidly.  This is the view from the  back door.

 This is the view from the back of the house toward the pool and the driveway side of the deck.

 

 This is the view from the ground looking up the stairs showing the rail a little closer.

 This is the end view showing the whole depth of the deck

 Looking from the other side of the deck.  The stairs on this side is the only thing left to do along with railing for both sets of stairs.

Chris posing on the deck.  We are so proud of this major accomplishment.

Thursday's Work

We were very concerned this morning about the weather, but the rain only came down for about 2 minutes and it wasn't very bad.  The sun came out about 3 o'clock.

 

 We had a good day of working today.  We got the section toward the pool all framed in on the pool side and then got extra support all in place.  While Chris was working on the tough cuts, I got all of the screws in on the 8 x 12 section we decked yesterday.

This is to show you the edge along the side of the pool. If you are really wondering we are raising a special breed of "black mollies" in the pool. 

 This is looking back the other way.

 By supper time, we had all of the deck boards cut and in place and screwed down. Looking pretty awesome.

 Jordan came home not feeling the best, so he wasn't out with us while we were working.  He came out as we were finishing up cleaning up.

 

More of the Project

The first six pictures were taken first thing this morning.

 

 Jeffrey brought his pressure washer over and we cleaned the old part of the deck.  It had some moss growing on it and when it got wet it was very slippery.  Jeffrey knew that from experience.  If you look at the next picture, the steps didn't get cleaned yet and so you can see what the deck would have looked like and the difference the pressure washer made.

 This the framing for the deck boards that we actually got finished last night but didn't get in our pictures because it got too dark to take pictures.  This area is 8' x12', the same size as the old deck.

 This is just some of the color in our backyard. 

 I took these pictures at the end of our day today.  We got the framing for the extension toward the pool all done.  It is all supported and framed together all but the facing boards at the pool side.  We will finish those in the morning.

 All of the deck boards are tacked down on this section but the last one, we have to cut that and we were just running out of steam about 5:15 pm.  We called it a day. 

 Looking back toward the house.  The saw is covered up in case of rain, which we didn't get today like they thought we would and we are very glad. The picture below is just from a different angle. Tomorrow we hope to finish the deck boards and then we have a set of stairs to build and put the rail around the top.  This deck has gone much smoother than the last one we built.  



The Vacation Project

 This is a picture of the deck on the back of our house, it measures 8' x 12'.  It had a rail around it and a set of stairs coming down this side.  We are enlarging the deck to reach out to our small swimming pool and also coming toward you in this picture another 8'. We started on Monday with our measuring and then ordering the supplies and they were delivered Monday afternoon.  The middle supports were not under the original deck.  We got those put in on Monday afternoon.   This deck has been in place for about nine years. It had sagged and settled and was an awful thing to level and straighten. We finished all of that by noon on Tuesday. We had torn the stairs off, so we had to get up and down off of the deck using the step ladder shown in the foreground. Jordan just loved going up and down the ladder.

 Our oil tank was originally set on old railroad ties.  Over the last ten years they had started to rot and were in real bad shape.  Monday the first job we got done was to jack up the tank, take the ties out, and put in some solid blocks.  That was a real job in itself, but we got everything in and taken care of so that should be good for another ten years.

 Tuesday we had to jack up the old deck, cut off some of the supports so that the end away from the house would be level with the rest of the deck.  There was a lot of crawling around underneath that deck the last two days.  We finally got it pretty close to level all the way around. 

 After the leveling process was done, then we put the old stairs (that fit perfectly) on the other side of the deck with blocks underneath the end. That made it a lot easier getting up and down off of the deck. 

 Here you can see the start of the framework that will support the addition to the east end of the deck.  We got the brackets attached and then we leveled the frame and got it all anchored and braced so that we can proceed with the 2 x 6 joists on top.  The picture below shows the new blocks in place under the supports that we had to cut off.  Keep watching for more updates, we did more work after I took these pictures.