If home is where the heart is, then the kitchen is a home’s soul. If you want to improve the look, style and function of your kitchen, but think the project is too complicated or expensive, DIY’s Kitchen Renovations is for you.

The 2009 International Residential Code (IRC) has a number of big changes when it comes to framing decks.  If your state, county or town will be adopting the ’09 IRC you’d better take a look at a copy of the code before you get a code violation.

The changes are all related to how you connect the ledger to the building.  For one, there’s now a prescriptive chart for fastener patterns, no more ‘rule of thumb’ bolt or lag screw frequency.  You just match the depth of your deck to your fastener of choice (1/2 inch lag screw, 1/2 inch thru-bolt or 1/2 inch thru-bolt with stacked washer space) and you’re good to go.  But you are going to need a structural engineer if you want to bolt your deck ledger to anything but a 2x rim joist or a 1 inch thick Douglas Fir LVL rim.  This means you have to know how the floor is framed when adding a deck to an existing building.  Plus if the rim joist is concealed on the inside, you have to provide some sort of visual access for inspections – get out the hole saw….

Read this article…