Many years ago, when engineered hardwood flooring was a fairly new option for wood flooring, I used it to replace the vinyl flooring in our kitchen, dinette, and foyer. It was 3/8-inch-thick and had a thin layer of pre-finished oak veneer and a plywood base. This wood flooring had to be glued down. The manufacturer…
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To be clique, all good things must come to an end. After 25 years, I was tiring of the annual start up and shut down of the pool. Cleaning the pool was a chore. Nobody was using it so cleaning of the pool was done occasionally resulting in more time. The kids were no longer…
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We bought our share of solar covers. Since we had a 16 foot by 32-foot oval pool, I always needed to trim the cover. Some came as a 16 foot by 32-foot rectangular shape. Others came as ovals but did not fit the shape of the pool. We depended on the sun to heat our…
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Like the railings, the gate would be made of 2 x 4 rails and stiles and 2 x 2 balusters. How the gate would operate was the issue. I did not want anything on the pool deck to help with the gate that would cause toes to be stubbed. I thought about a sliding gate,…
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I continued my work on the pool deck. I now would start on the filter side of the pool deck. Things went fairly well. I designed and built a hatch opening to get at the filter skimmer cover. The filter itself would be placed on a concrete pad outside the deck. I planned on building…
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Using pressure-treated deck boards was the most cost-effective way at that time. There were some man-made products on the market, but they were very costly. Now you can find a variety of types and colors of decking at your home improvement stores for a decent price. I was not going to use the one-inch thick…
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Even though the deck was not complete, I needed to put down something between the house and pool deck. The kids were walking on the dirt and bringing it into the pool. I needed to get the concrete patio done. The thought of just a concrete slab did not thrill me. In fact, to get…
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Excited to get started on the pool deck, I was up early on Saturday morning. I needed to wait until 8:00 AM to start using power tools as to not disturb the neighbors. I would first need to layout the posts locations. Believe me, I spent a lot of time figuring out the height of…
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Once the pool was in place, we filled the openings around the pool with stone gravel. Nothing with equipment. Simply good old back breaking work. Once that job was complete, I could start on the pool deck. I would use pressure-treated wood for the structure. I would have preferred a more stable, man-made decking, but…
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The contractor excavated an area behind the pool where there was a three-foot hill. Before I could start the pool deck, I needed to build a retaining wall. Using 6 x 6 inch pressure-treated timbers, I started laying the base for the retaining wall. Once I had the first layer level, I secured the timbers…