Deck Remodel – Wednesday (day 7)

Not much progress today. I braced a portion of the outer face board in order to pull down another post. Then I backed out the lag screws attaching the face to the post.  Unfortunately this time the post came out of the ground along with the concrete pad. Like many other parts of the existing deck, the footing/pad was less substantial than it should have been.   The footing that came out of the ground was only about 3″ deep and maybe 18″ in diameter.  I ended up pouring a full replacement footing for the post at least 18″ deep and probably the same in diameter with a nice new piece of re-bar sticking out ready to receive my new post when the concrete has hardened sufficiently.  I can imagine somebody 20 years from now blogging about how dumb it was for “someone to make such a big footing for a deck” and what a pain it was to pull out and so on.  Oh well… too bad for them!