Building a Deck, the Dummy Approach

Framing for a round deck

Remember the TV show "That's So Raven"? Neither do we, except for the title. We do, however, have a plaque on our office wall that says. "That's so eHow," by which we mean typical dumbassery. Take, for example, eHow contributor William Jackson (we wonder if he's been nicknamed Billy Jack), one of whose "so eHow" moments came when he published "How to Build a Round Deck."¹ We're not so sure where he got his plans, but we did find them rather... amusing.

Jackson's thesis is that your round deck will be supported by a central pillar:

"The most important thing to understand in building a round deck is that the central supporting pillar needs to be extremely strong, since it will support almost all the deck's weight."

We have no idea why he thinks that, since any reference we were able to find for round or curved decks says that the support system is no different from a rectangular deck. Oddly, apparently William lost the link to his plans (it's not published at eHow), because once he gets done haranguing his readers about that "central beam":

"First, set your central beam, which will measure at least one inch in diameter for each foot of the final deck diameter, placing in the hole and filling around with cement"... ...his instructions become nothing more than a rehash of standard deck-construction; instructions that can be summed up in "secure the beams," "install the flooring" and "put on stairs and a railing." Since this is eHow, we expected a little more detail than instructions such as "According to your plans... attach your stairs to the deck's side...If you would like to attach railing to your deck, do so now according to your design. "

The lone comment on Jackson's article (ever noticed that eHow content rarely has comments?) simply snarks, "If I had deck plans I wouldn't be asking how to frame a deck..." Now there's a comment that warms the cockles of our collective heart!

We see a serious problem with Jackson's instructions. Did you catch the omission? Its simple: Bill never says a word about how to make the deck ROUND! Nothing at all about a rim joist - an octagon? a dodecagon? what? Nothing about how to cut the deck boards to form a smooth outer curve (hint: you can't do this with a circular saw...). And what about that railing: how do you curve it? Or do you even try?

Sheesh, what a fool: no wonder he's our Dumbass of the Day.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_4840133_build-round-deck.html

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