You are finally ready to lay your decking and there are many options out there, but I won’t get into that, I will simply explain the best way to lay your decking. Whether you are using wood or composite the following will apply. The standard pattern is where you lay your decking at right angles to the joists. This is the most economical and basic way to lay your decking. By saying this is the most basic is not to say that it’s unattractive, in fact I think it’s still the best look you can get.
First you need to lay the boards parallel to the house. It is debatable whether you should start at the outer edge away from the house or closest to the house. I like to start at the outer edge and work closer to the house so if the last piece needs ripped for width it is less noticeable closer to the house. Some contractors will tell you to start at the house and work outwards. This takes the extra step of laying out all the boards and spacing them to make no rips necessary. This almost never works and you will inevitably have to rip a board for width anyway. When spacing out your boards you should space them 1/8 inch at least to allow proper water drainage and debris from clogging up. I like to use a nail or screw between the boards as I put them down, this creates a perfect spacing. This goes for all wood and composite except for treated wood. Treated wood will normally shrink about 1/8 inch so you don’t need to space treated deck planks.
If you have joints in a row they need to fall on the joist and this is where a double joist will help you a lot. If you don’t have a double joist you have to find the space to nail two ends of a board on one joist. No matter how you decide to do it, you need to drill pilot holes in the ends so you don’t split out your board. Most people think you don’t have to do this with composite decking, you do. Composite decking will split just like wood if your not careful. If you come across a bowed board you need to screw it in on one end and work along the board with a crow bar and screw it in at each joist while creating pressure and pushing the board to the correct spacing. As you continue making progress toward the final row you need to check for square often. Continually measure from the last row of decking to the header joist to make sure you are running square. If you find that you need to make an adjustment don’t do it all on the next row, simply spread out the correction over the next few rows.
Once you have laid all your decking you will need to trim the boards off the one side of deck that you let your boards run wild. Simply snap a chalk line along the end joists and make sure you have a straight line from one end to the other. Cut along the chalk line with a circular saw. Set the saw to a cutting depth equal to the thickness of the decking to avoid sawing into the end joists. Tack a straight 1×4 in place as a guide for the saw. This spacer will allow you to just concentrate on cutting a straight line and not on keeping the saw blade on the chalk line.
This is basically how you lay your decking on a new deck project. This is the basic way to do it and I will continue my series of deck building with how to deck around obstacles and how to deck different types of corners. Also I will get into how to deck a diagonal, herringbone and border pattern. There are lots of different types of patterns you can use and lots of different accessories you can build into your deck. Be creative and add anything you want to your deck, you really can’t ruin anything. You may have to buy more material but there is always a way to fix the problem.
