Decking - Epic 2

Sarah and I decided to replace our carpet and put in hardwoods, while we were at it, we decided to replace the decking too.  What the hay, can't be that hard could it?  Wrong!

The old deck, only 6 years old but looks pretty bad.  We hated that there were so many different kinds of fasteners and holes that were haphazardly (irregular) made for the fasteners

 Lifting the deck was much harder than we expected, 2 different screws whose heads were clogged with debris.  We had to clear the debris before we could back them out with a drill with whatever we could find that was pointy.  Three different kinds of nails, including super long screw shank nails which were pure evil.

Bigger pile than it looks and only about 1/2 of the debris created from the removal of the railing and deck boards and "benches".  Some of those boards are 16' long. 

The 20 lbs of screws and nails that were removed with the decking and railing, seriously a bunch of hacks who built our deck.  (posts held down with toe-nailed brads.  5000 18ga brads are equivalent to a single lag bolt right?)

Constantly rejiggering furniture, deck boards, etc in order to have a place to walk and let the finish dry while being able to work on the next section of the deck.  Lots of planning around the weather too, we lucked out this Oct, although it was HOT! 

Stinky was perfectly comfy though and did a lot of watching and meowing through the window, when not sleeping. 

Completed deck with the railing saved for next year.  Still have some fascia to put up, but that should be easy (knock on wood).  Doesn't look like much, but our deck is over 40' long.  

The hidden faster system was worth it but took 2-3 times as long to install (cutting biscuit slots, getting the fastener inserted along the entire length, the correct gap).  The boards are all clean single board runs except in the middle where we ran a board perpendicular (hard to see).   Straightening the 18' long boards for the main part of the deck were a bear.  Sarah and I are both glad the hard work is done.  Ipe is always what we wanted, already much better and cleaner looking while providing the durability that cedar can't even come close to.  I've already dropped stuff on the deck and there isn't even a scratch this stuff is so hard.  I think we would do it again to, I don't think we could pay someone for the level of attention we paid while building this deck.

What an epic and HOT project.  I don't think I've ever sweat so much on a project.  Maybe the next project will be to finally build some furniture.