Jeny's Ideas: DIY Dock Progress

Happy Tuesday morning! I hope everyone had an amazing weekend. Ours was filled with tons of work but we finished it off with fun, crawfish, and friends.

Last week, Brian took Thursday and Friday off to work on the dock. Here is a reminder of our sad original dock.

And here is a reminder of our drawing/plan.

We started this weekend's work by picking up our main supports from Kemah Hardware. This required some questionable road safety.

First step of the day, we cut the pilings to the correct length and we made notches for the 2 x 12x 20s to rest in so all the weight isn't in the screws and bolts. This required Blittle to be in the boat, tied off to the pilings. He leaned over the side of the boat to use the saw and I held the extension cord from the dock, over the water. Not the safest thing we have ever done but sadly, not the scariest either. I don't even have a picture of this because we didn't want our phones near the water. Power tools and electrical cords over the water...sure. Phones...no way.

Once the notches were done, we floated one of the 2x12x20s over to the pilings. It never ceases to amaze me what I can do when I push myself. Either that or bootcamp really is making me stronger. We lifted an already super heavy and now wet 2x12x20 from water level to the top of the pilings (about 3 - 4 feet) from the side of the boat. Not easy people. With both of us hanging over one side of the boat plus the weight of the wood, I was scared for our little boat and for us. But we did it. We got it in place. The other two were a lot easier because they were cut shorter and we could place them from the old dock.

As usually, I forgot to photograph a step. Here is a shot Blittle got. It was taken in the evening so it is blurry and dark but you can see the dock framed up.

DIY Tip: If you have a big job, ask your local lumber store about delivery. We needed many 16 ft long lumber and even with two trucks, it was going to take several trips to get it all and it really isn't that safe (as seen in the picture in the beginning of this post.) We decided to have our next round of supplies delivered. Our delivery charge was only $35. For us that is worth the time, gas, and effort we saved.

Only bad thing about delivery, they were 3 hours later than they said they would be. This caused us to get behind a little. Saturday afternoon we worked hard and got our other large support put in.