Step 3: The Joists

This is the last step before the placing of the decking boards.

The joists will be perpendicular to the girders below it. Placing the joists above the girders will support the decking boards that will soon be placed on top.

The blue lines above show which boards are the joists.

At this phase in the project, I will be nailing them into the end board and then sliding everything over to the wall.

I will square it up and once it's finally squared, I can nail it in, and it will stay put.

Now in my case, there is a giant post in the way. So, what I will do is figure out where the first joist goes and then figure out where the last joist goes and then I will post and shoot them in. Then I can go ahead and slide the others into place.

The picture above shows the blocking in between. I put the blocks there to avoid creaking in the boards when the deck is finished. I placed the blocks in 2 different places just to keep the deck from creaking too much. All of these joists are toe-nailed in from each direction.

One thing I wanted to explain quickly is that these are on 16-inch centers because we are using 5-quarter boards. I have these cantilevered on the sides, which just means it hangs over the side.