The Harbour Island Job

I was hired by the Home Owners Association of a community called Harbour Island to replace pressure treated decking boards around the retaining wall of their entryway sign and on the abutments of the bridge leading into the community.  The old boards were very sun damaged, cracking, lifting and generally an eye sore. 

The association requested that I use an upgraded .4lb pressure treated lumber (not quite marine grade but one step up from what you can get off the shelf at Home Depot or Lowes) and stainless steel screws to affix the boards as the standard grade PT lumber and nails did not hold up the way they had expected previously.  The job consisted of removing and putting back down approximately 330 linnear board feet (LBF) of 2"X8" PT boards that had multiple compound angles to cut.  Additionally, over time, these retaining walls had settled and sagged making even the straight runs require very slight modification cuts (sometimes as little as 2 degrees and almost undetectable to the human eye in the finished product) to ensure that the bow in the wall didn't protrude past the decking boards.  ... like dad always said... "Measure twice and cut once..."  See the below before and after photos.

BEFORE:                                                  AFTER:

You can see the general condition of the old boards.  They were falling apart.  The photo on the left is just after I started removing the old material and the photo on the right is of the replaced and corrected finished product.

If you expand the photo on the left you will see how the wall had settled and left a large gap between the boards sticking out from the bridge and the rest of the wall and then the corrected / replaced material on the right.

Similarly with the photo to the left you can see how the settling of the wall caused the boards to lift where they were rubbing against the concrete on the bridge. You can see the corrected material on the right

And of course on the lower right the bracing material under the decking boards had pulled away and had to be rebuilt as well. 

It may not look like much but it is vastly improved over what was there and with screws to hold it all in place rather than nails it should hold up for a good long time.