Day Three

**Actual boat building update. Bought plans last night for a 1 Sheet + boat, a simple one person craft made from one sheet of plywood. It nests down to something small enough to fit in the trunk of a car. Looks like a really fun project that I should be able to get into very cheap. Might end up building a bunch of these to give away or sell later.

Day Three of the deck build was actually not very productive. Day 2 ended with level 2 getting floored and level 3 getting the rim job. We had to start out with a very finite list of supplies to get from Lowe's. We knew exactly how many remaining framing parts were still left and had a rough idea of flooring. Also I had a plan for the handrails so we eventually agreed on a design for those and calculated some of the materials to pick up. Most of my day was spent carving out the handrail posts.

By 1:45 the AM work was done, joists in place for Level 3

Kelley is pleased with this progress

The day ended after sundown with some flooring there, but you can see the first part of the handrail on Level 2

Daylight pic from before we did anything on July 4

The handrail system we came up with took a lot of prep work. I had 9 posts to cut out with 5 cuts each on the circular saw. Didn't get a picture of the plain cutout. I drew a template, fitted the template to give me the right finished height, then traced that outline with a sharpie onto each of the rest of the 4x4 boards. Once the first two posts were installed, I cut 4" blocks from 2x4 scraps and screwed them for spacers. Ran a 2x4 horizontally along the spacers and the top, then I could get the measurement to cut the ballasts. Then it was time to cut about 100 ballasts to the exact same length.

While I was doing that, Kelley was on her own cutting and installing the flooring on level 3. That process goes a lot faster if one person can cut while the other is screwing it down. We both made a lot of progress for having a short work day, and really don't have too much to show for it.

But that means that on Day 4 it should all come together, right?