Last week I went to Home Depot to pick up some of the wood and fasteners I’d need. For my joists I decided that I would use metal hangers to attach them to the front and rear beams. The other option would be to just nail or screw them in directly or support them underneath with some wood as I did for the floor of my shed. I read up about the metal hangers and they can support quite a lot of weight and have the advantage of not requiring me to access the back of any of the beams, which is useful as the rear one will be attached to the fence.
Home Depot was quite busy when Tomoko and I went and there was a long lineup just to get inside. I needed to get some plywood cut to more easily fit in the car and also a bunch of 6×6 posts but with me not wanting to wait around I ended up just buying a dozen 2×6 boards and some construction screws. I was about to buy the joist hangers but I wasn’t sure in my mind at the time exactly how many I’d be using and there were tons so I could just pick them up when I came to get more wood.
The following Saturday I went early in the morning and there was no lineup. I was able to get my posts and cut the plywood but I couldn’t find any of the metal joist hangers. No big deal, I could just pick them up from the Rona down the street (the main reason for going to Home Depot is that they’d cut the plywood for me) when I needed them. At home I started putting the pieces I had together.
These are the posts lined up roughly where they’ll be once all is said and done. The space in question is a bit more than 4 feet wide by a bit less than 24 feet long. The posts are spaced 4 feet apart except closest to the gate where the posts would be 8 feet apart with two 2×6 boards in that section to create separate areas for the garbage and recycling containers.
The corner post was taken up by the fence panels so I needed to cut in a space so that I could attach the end joist to it. I had to remove a couple of nails and then cut out a space using a mallet and chisel. Once it was cut out I could insert the board into the space and attach it with some construction screws. I then attached the beams that follow the rear fence to the already installed fence posts, which was fairly straightforward. In my plans I thought that the ground was sloped enough that following the fence would give me enough of a slope. However when I measured the angle it was only a degree off level. So I’ll make the front higher than the back and have the slope go that way instead.
Then it was time to cut notches in the first post for the joist to fit into.
The first step was to measure out the area I needed to cut. Once that was measured I made a whole bunch of cuts with my circular saw. Basically once you’ve cut at the two ends you can do what you want in between them because everything will be removed anyway. Once the cuts were done it was back to the chisel to remove the excess wood.
The wood came out quite easily. It took a bit more effort to then clean the space up and make it relatively straight and smooth. I put it in place to see how it would fit with the screwed-in joist and had to widen it slightly so that it would fit. For whatever reason the 2×6 I was using to test my cut was narrower than the 2×6 for the joist, shouldn’t they all be the same size? The next step was to do the same for the back of the post where the beam across the front was going to go. Again I marked the area and then using my circular saw I cut a whole lot of notches in it. Once that was cleaned out with my chisel I had this:
And I put it in place to make sure the wood would fit.
Now it was time to work on the next post, but I needed to get some joist hangers so that I could cut the joist and measure the post to where it’s supposed to go. So with no joist hangers it would have to wait until the next day, which was fine because I needed a break anyway.
I checked Rona’s website and for whatever reason they don’t carry the joist hangers. So I decided that I’d just go to a different Home Depot on Sunday morning and I’d drop off some seeds at a friend’s house who lived near that Home Depot. When I got to the Home Depot I found that there weren’t any joist hangers even though the website was telling me there were 40-something in stock. A helpful employee tried to locate them for me but after a fair bit of time was unable to. No matter there was another Home Depot not too far away that had over 80 in stock. Yet when I got there they were all gone too. Apparently someone had picked them all up before I got there. Defeated I dropped off the seeds and went home. And then placed an online order for the joist hangers so that I wouldn’t have to waste another trip to the Home Depot.
Now I’m just waiting to get the email that its ready for pickup so that I can resume work.
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