Tip: Get a white colored pencil to mark your cut lines with! Way easier to see on the dark Trex boards than regular pencil. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a county for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. Her father also has two engineering degrees. This wasn’t hard, but it put a lot of stress on my arms and back. In many other cases, it took more convincing. In many cases, I could simply wedge it under the deck board, and slam it down, and an entire section would pop out of the joist. I used a 7 foot long pry bar – some serious hardware – to pop the boards out.

This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and pretty healthy. So if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. I want to pay that treasure trove of information back so to speak, hence this post. When my wife and I go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we try to read personal blogs and reviews online to get the real story. If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch.

Install trex deck boards