A little over a year ago we purchased our retirement home and have been slowly doing some upgrades . I am now pretty close to tackling the back deck which it appears the original owners stained once and that was it
. So the situation is some/most of the deck boards ( 5/4 x 6 ) are badly checked/cracked and some are lifting at the ends as they were nailed down vs. screwed down . Basically this is two decks one on each end of the house joined by a walkway making it one large deck .
Structurally the joists are solid and 16 " on center . The ballusters for the most part are solid and can be saved . The hand rail posts are solid but the handrail top surface is crapple and needs to be replaced . Looking from under the deck the builder/installer used metal flashing along the house where the deck meets the house . So that is the baseline I am working with .
I have found a guy on CL about 2 hours away selling some composite deck boards , he is a scrapper/wholesaler that deals in closeouts and over buys . He doesn't normally sell this type of decking but apparently came across a decent amount of brown and grey in 16 ' lengths only . He is selling it for .88 a foot which is very reasonable . From the pics in his ad it looks like the same decking I had at our previous house which seemed to be decent stuff . This is not the type designed for hidden fasteners so pre drilled countersunk holes would be the install method . I " think " it is TREX brand but really not sure .
The two main portions of the deck are 18 ' 3 " long so each board will have a seam . I'm thinking of making each seam with an angled cut vs. butting them square any issues doing that ? So when installing with two screws at the seams they would go through both pieces and stay flush . I would offset the seams end for end on every other board . Every screw hole will be pre drilled and countersunk to hopefully eliminate splitting . For spacing of the boards is a # 10 common nail a good spacer ?
Have I missed anything ? Any other suggestions ? I could replace with pressure treated wood again but I am not looking forward to staining and restaining every 5 years as I get older
Here are pics of the current mess .
