Day one of construction (Sunday a week and a half ago) was a very unsucessful day. I didn't take any photos, because none of my ideas worked. I thought I would build the structure by hanging it from the sides of the pool, and then building the superstructure underneath. That way, the upper deck would be automatically level with the top of the pool. Turned out this was impossible to do by yourself (only one guy, and the wood is *really* heavy when it's 16' long. I gave up in disgust, and couldn't sleep that night.
Well, that night, I decided that I should call the guys in AZ and beg them to come out and build it for me. They said no. So, it was back to the drawing board again. I decided that the only way to really build this was do start at the bottom and try to build it like a traditional beam / joist / top surface deck. So, I got some concrete feet, some pressure treated 4x4s, and a bunch of 8x2x16 boards to use as joists. I placed the concrete feet as close to the sides of the pool as possible, where they wouldn't be angled too much (the pool bottom is not flat, of course). Then I used my level to align the two degrees of freedom on the posts (after sawing an angle on the bottom to "match" the angle on the feet). Sure enough, the posts when anchored to the feet stay up in the air, nice and level by themselves. It took me a while to figure out the best way to do this, and a lot of trial and error with the 8' long 4x4s. After building two of these posts with the "swivel foot" concrete pier, I placed one of the 16' beams across the top. This was a big improvment over the zero productivity of day one.
Oh, the pink string was used to determine the top surface of the deck. I then measured down from there the width of the top deck material, the height of the joist, and the height of the beam. That's how I knew where to cut the 4x4s. As I will disclose later on, this is only an approximate measurement...
Some photos:
