Those who know me well know that, when it comes to building things, I’m a bit of a stickler for doing things right and a true believer in “straight and level”.  I learned early on that a job is much easier if you build things square.  I’ve remodeled lots of houses and buildings and when it was obvious the original builder owned a tape measure and a level, and knew how to use them, the project went much smoother.  So when I started to build a deck for my sister in Canada I was a little confused by the local building practices.

Normally, when you build a deck, you make sure that the structure is as unmovable as possible.  I like to lag bolt the deck into the house with a 1/2 inch bolt at least every 12 inches and pour caissons with sonotubes at least 4 feet deep for the main support posts.  I prefer 6×6 posts to 4x4s and 2x8s to 2x6s.  You might accuse me of over-engineering but I want everything I build to stand the test of time and feel like you’re standing on solid ground.  What hadn’t occurred to me was what the extreme conditions of Canada could have on a structure.  Prince Edward Island is made up, almost entirely, of sandy soil and sandstone.  It tends to retain water and when the winter weather hits and everything freezes, it can heave the ground up to six inches.  So, to keep your deck from ripping off the side of your house, decks are usually built “freestanding”.  In other words, it’s like a big table sitting next to your house.  It’s right up against the house, but not connected.  Even the stairs aren’t hard mounted to the deck.  They’re attached to it with 2-3 large hinges to allow them to rise and fall with the ground.  There’s no concrete to pour, the posts simply sit on precast concrete pads which just sit on the ground.  The whole process was foreign to my preconceived engineering sensibilities but “When in Rome….”.

I was, freezing and heaving be damned, determined to start the thing off plumb and level.  Once I got my head around the new paradigm, the project progressed smoothly and building basics are still building basics.  I did bolt some additional diagonal cross supports between the vertical posts to prevent side to side sway, but, for the most part, I kept to the original plans.  By the fourth day, with Pegs help, everything was done except the railings.

Railings are functionally and esthetically the most important part of a deck.  No matter how sturdy the deck if the railings don’t feel sturdy and, more importantly, meet code then the project is a bust.  It has to be high enough that your average person can’t tumble over it (for obvious reasons I usually make them taller!) and the balusters have to be spaced close enough together that a small child can’t stick their head between them and choke.  That distance varies from place to place but it’s generally a maximum of 4″.  As usual, I prefer to exceed the code so I go with 3 1/2″.  It’s not that I know children with exceptionally small heads it’s that 3 1/2″ inches makes my life a little easier.  Here’s what I mean.

I could go around the entire deck and mark the top rail and the bottom rail every four inches and then line up each baluster with the marks and hold them by hand, or with a clamp, while I screw them in.  100 balusters, 1 at a time.  Sounds painful!  Or, I could, use a scrap piece of 2×4 (which is really 1 1/2′ x 3 1/2″) the same length as the balusters and simply slap it, and the next baluster, up against the previous one and screw the next one in.  Basically using the 2×4 as a spacer.  I choose the latter!  There is only one small problem with the 2×4 spacer method which really isn’t a problem as long as you’re aware of it.  There are always minute variations in lumber.  It might be that there’s a knot that protrudes slightly from one side or that one section shrunk a little while the lumber was drying.  It’s imperceptible to the naked eye, but it’s there.  You wouldn’t notice a variation of 1/32″ or even 1/16″ between two balusters but by the time you get to the end of a 16 baluster run it could be 1/2′ to an 1″ off  and it will be obvious and it will look like crap.  The solution is simple.  Every 3-4 balusters you just have measure the gap, at both the top and the bottom from the one you’ve just installed to the end of the run.  If the gap is larger at the top than the bottom then, over the next 3-4 balusters, hold the tops a little looser to the spacer at the top than at the bottom.  Don’t make the correction all at once.  The discrepancy worked its way in gradually, take it out gradually.  You know the first corner is plumb and the next corner is plumb you just have to manage the process along the way.

In many ways building a deck is like building a life.  We try to build it square and plumb on solid ground because we know that strength comes from a good foundation.  But if we make it too rigid and the ground shifts or heaves the results can be catastrophic.  We start off knowing that the end is perfectly vertical but imperfections sneak in along the way.  Wrong choices and bad decisions don’t seem like much at the time but when we measure them against the objective we realize that we’re gradually straying off plumb and need some correction.  And we need to remind ourselves that there’s only one carpenter who’s ever been able to create something that will always be plumb and never fail.