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t the end of the Winter in 2005, I decided I needed more parking space in my driveway. I hated the fact that the only way I could get into my garage easily was to back it in since there wasn't much remove to manuever. The idea I came up with was to remove my deck and remove the dirt underneath it to make a parking spot. Then rebuild the deck. The other thing was to fix the walkway. The previous owner put flagstones on top of the original concrete path and put mortar around it. After years of being eatten away by salt in the Winter time, it started to fall apart. My goal is to demolish this and build new steps with granite stones if money permits.

The old deck demolished took one Saturday to remove. I used a circular saw and cut inup into 8 sections. My excavator charged me $250 to come pick it up and haul it to the dump. Underneath the deck, I found a huge twenty year old stump. I also found that one end of the deck was held up by a cast iron jack stand. The other end was held up by a notch 4x4 stuck into the ground. One hit from my sledgehammer knocked the deck over in one swoop!

The excavation and foundation prep work was done in one day by my excavator. He demolished the front steps while he was at it and removed the old stump in the process. The foundation work took 3 days. Day 1 - to build the foot form and pour it. Day 2 - to build the foundation form and pour it. Day 3 - to remove the forms. Lastly, the crushed gravel was put in and compacted.

After the foundation was poured, I waited a few weeks on the foundation to sit before beginning work on the deck. I built it over a 3 day period. Day 1 - installed the 2x8x13 joists and plywood. Day 2 - put down rubber membrane and decking. Day 3 - fixed the siding and put on the stairs. The rubber membrane was used to keep water from getting in underneath the deck. I put a slight slope (1/8 inche every foot) on the deck to shed the water.

I decide to replace the old steps to the walkway with granite. I think granite is visually nice to look at plus it lasts forever until concrete. It took my excavator and a helper about 6 hours to install them. I pitched in at times to when it came to actually putting the stones in place. It takes one person to operate the boom and two people to place the stones into position

After building the deck, I had the idea of building a roof over it. This would keep the water away from the front of the garage opening and also save me from shoveling it in the Winter. It took a week to frame it and roof it. Winter arrived and I ended up having a fire at my house in Janaury 07 so the finish work ended up going put off until Summer 07. I ripped down the siding and installed shiplap pine and tongue/groove beaded pine ceiling.

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Start date of: 5/20/2006
Completion date of: 9/5/2007

Price breakdown:

• Cost to haul off the old deck to the dump: $250
• One foundation wall and one frost wall: $2500
• Old flagstone stair excavation: $350
• Excavation and backfill of foundation: $1000
• Compaction of the garage floor $50
• Gravel $250
• Deck wood and building materials $1400
• Granite step stones $900
• Installation of step stones $550
• Stone sand $75
• Roof lumber $600
• Roofing materials and nailer rental $800
• Concrete Slab $700
• Ballusters $300
• Pine siding $200
• Pine ceiling $500

• Total $10,200