Well, here we are in the new year, lots of work left to do on the deck. Today I did some staining of the blocking I cut up the other day. Too cold to do it indoors, and the fumes from that stain are just wicked, my eyes and nose are telling me so.  Makes the whole house stink bad.

Try and cut an actual 6×6 with your standard 7.25″ saw, and you don’t quite make it.

Here is a shot of the new HRV intake vent I had custom made. Hopefully it won’t require cleaning as often as the old one did. You can also see the “flexible flashing”, or sticky rubber sheeting to deflect any water that may get behind the ledger board…but by seeing what 20 years had done to the false ledger boards (nothing) this proably won’t do much other than seperate the metal flashing from the treated wood. I also used it along the tops of the built up beams, to shed water.

You can also see dust on the siding from where I had to grind down the stucco siding about one inch because the old false ledger boards had a 3/4 inch rabbet on the bottom back side to act as a drip edge overtop of the stucco. To use a full unadulterated ledger board, this top inch had to be removed all the way around the house. I used a 4 inch side grinder along a chalk line.

I know this isn’t part of the deck project, but it was a 4 week project to create a level area, fill with pea gravel, and erect the playset.

Here is a pic of the old Heat Recovery Ventilator exhasut vent, as you can see the old false ledger board had to be cut to make room for the vent. I didn’t want to bother with cutting the actual ledger board and deal with structural integrity issues. So I had to drop it down a few inches.