DR EE CC OVK ERY >>>
has enough bite to tear up all
the heavy framing you can
throw at it.
And although the Gutster has
built-in nail-pullers, much to my
dismay the previous deck
builder had used headless,
smooth-shank nails—hundreds
of which failed to pull up with
the deck boards. This meant I
was stuck pulling nails with pliers—one at a time, up close
and personal.
RE-DECKING
Once all the old deck boards
were out of the way, I had the
green light for the composites.
The first new board went down
beneath the hand rail and flush
with the outside edge of the
deck. I used a drill/driver to
fasten it down with composite
decking screws in pilot holes,
driven no closer than 1 inch
from the edge of the deck
board. When pre-drilling composite boards, you’ll notice that
some shavings of composite
material will probably pull out
of the hole. I used those composite shavings to cover the
countersunk heads of the deck
screws—softly tap in the shavings with a hammer; it works
like a wood plug.
The rest of the boards
required no pre-drilling. Instead,
each deck board has a 3/16-
inch channel along both edges
in which to install hidden metal
fasteners. Timbertech’s
ConceaLoc fastener system
uses two-sided metal hangers
that operate similarly to wood
biscuits. However, instead of
To begin demolition of the decking, I
cross-cut the first board with a recip saw.
Once it was cut, the board pulled
up easily with a small pry bar.
