Pulp Deck

Pulp Deck

There is something to be said for having a large collection of ladders! Through the years and various projects, we’ve accumulated a bunch of them, pretty much based off the needs for any particular job and specific use. Turns out the Pulp Deck project pretty much is making use out of all of them!

As of last week, we had gotten busy on the tongue and groove ceiling plank install and had finished with the “main” kitchen/bar area overhead (complete with lights and ceiling fan install). This week….time to keep going on the rest of it.

First up was the covered walkway that spans the space between actual house and the main area of the deck itself. Fairly simple except for the 30 degree turn it takes to get to the house kitchen door! On initial thinking, you get to the angle, and then, just cut the T&G planks at the correct angle and in they go, right? Not so much. With the walkway roof being of the “vaulted” and or V-shaped variety, simple angle cuts do not work for the ceiling planks. It’s a lot more like when you are doing crown molding, like a double angle cut. Now, while we do have a means for building a templet to cut crown molding, anything not at a 45 degree angle becomes slightly more involved, so, what to do? Decision was made to install a trim piece at the angle itself so that the T&G just ponies up to it, and you have a nice, and clean, transition (kind of like if you were doing exterior siding and you’d put trim pieces at the corners so that the siding just butts up to it). Found a nice piece of 1” thick PVC trim board (you want it to be a little proud of the T&G), cut an angle on each side of the trim and then just landed one on each side of the turn. Problem solved.

Now the need for all ladders! The main roof structure over the kitchen/bar area extends a couple feet out in front of the deck to help keep some of the weather, aka, rain and snow, off of the deck, so we can use it during inclement weather times. That roof extension is about 12 to 13 feet above the ground, not that easy to get to. Cue the extension ladders. We’ve been here before. You might recall that back in old Pulpland (Kentucky), we had to do some exterior work on the Pulp Porch project, the porch being on the 2nd floor of the house and the need for a 24 foot extension ladder. For general projects, we had always had a 16 foot extension ladder, and for working on stairs/uneven levels, a Genie ladder (it allows you to adjust the legs on both sides so that you can put one side on one level of stairs and then one on a higher or lower set of stairs, which, can also turn into an extension ladder (see adjacent pic). Add in a a couple standard ladders of various sizes, including a 12 footer chained to the far side exterior of the deck, an a 10 footer on the deck to hand tools off to the person on the extension ladder, and all in, we were good to go!

Near complete on all of the T&G install (couple pieces left to go on the outside of walk path roof) and going to pick up some Cedar Shake siding planks for the face of the wall just below the overhanging roof on main deck section. Moving along!

Progress pics below, see you next week!