Deck Joists and garden mulch

Notwithstanding that the inside of the house was still a workzone, later in January, my friend Martin joined us for a weekend, camping in a tent out the back. Work continued apace on the decking, disguising the lack of work being carried out on the rendering.The concrete forms around each of the foundations were removed. They had been made with scrap timber held together with two nails from the farming nailer in diagonally opposit corners ad two screws resued from the formwork in the other two. This meant that they wer easy to take apart with the impact driver.

With the bearers all secured in place it was just a matter of cutting to length, squaring and attaching the 90 x 45 treted pine joists. But prior to this we removed any vegetation left under the deck area and covered it in a layer of blue metal. This was done to proide good drainage under the deck and try to prevent grass growing there. the joists were then attached with two galvinised skew nails from the fraiming nailer where each joist crossed a bearer. I enjoyed the speed with which the joists went on.

L shaped side deck

Front of house with decks

Main front deck

More thought was required for the curved deck and my friend, Martin, helped me work out where extra bearers and joists and blocking between the ends of the joists was needed to support the curved edge of the deck.

The curved deck

Prior to Christmas I had ordered a truckload of mulch from a tree lopping company. It arrived unexpectedly in mid January. The pile was so big that before we spread it out we had to climb over it to get from the back gate to the house. We spread out wet newspaper, leftovers collected from the local newsagent, to surpress the weeds and mulched the back section of the garden. It was amazing the transformation it made, take it from building site to a home. Two passionfriut plants were also oplanted along the back fence. A while fig tree, gifted by a friend, was added to the garden. While we were not on site our neighbours Leslie and Don, who are avid gardners, have lovingly watered and fertilised our passionfruit and figs and hev even protected them from the digging paws of the bandicoots.

The mulch pile

Newly mulched garden