Okay, so day eight was spent trying to figure out what color to stain the deck. Multiple trips to Lowes and Home Depot later (with gallons of stain I will now never use), resulted in me going with the Behr Deck / Fence solid color stain that will match the concrete almost perfectly. It's a greyish color with some pinkish hues in there. I bought a gallon tonight (again), and will test paint tomorrow.
In the meantime, I started on the other side of the pool. The goal is to build the same sized deck on the west side of the pool, and then join them together. Having already done this on the east side, this was much easier (and I only made a total of four posts, instead of six to start). So progress for day eight was four posts, two beams, and then I laid the joists across the beams to show some apparent progress. The lumber yard I went to for the other wood was out of stock on the 8x2x16, so I got it from another location. They must use a different type of process on this treated wood, as it was much greener (both are Douglas Fir). Odd that there would be a big difference in color like that.
On a side note, I have spent just about as much time in lumber yards, Home Depto, and Lowes as I have actually working on the deck. It's very frustrating, but I waste a lot of my time trying to find just the right equipment / parts. No one place has it all, and the people at all of the stores (including the lumber yards), are either extremely slow or incredibly unhelpful. Home Depot and Lowes in particular seem to only hire the bottom of the barrel these days. The guy at Lowes had no idea what I was talking about when I was trying to inquire about ordering redwood, the guy at Home Depot didn't know what hidden fasteners were, and didn't know anything about the IQ hidden fastener system, for which Home Depot is a dealer. Didn't bother to help find out either. Very frustrating - it makes Pelican's great Customer Service surely stand out.
Photos from day eight, assembly of the west side:
