Totally Decked Out
It was definitely a bit of trial and error, and while it's not super perfect, I think it's pretty decent for my first go at deckery.
To start I lagged some boards against the foundation of the house. I did so using some concrete bolts and some spacers to keep the board from being completely flush against the foundation (this should help prevent rot).
Next up, sinking some 4x4s into the ground. These are the outer supports for the deck. I figured I wanted something with a bit of angle to it, not just a total square. So I set them so there would be a 45º angle at the outer corners.
Dinah enjoys investigating the post holes as well. Nothing more fun than little cat prints. It's a shame it had to be covered up. Maybe sometime in the far far future there will be an advanced culture that comes along and finds out about Dinah and my cats from this lone footy.Anyway, at this point I attached some doubled up 2x8 boards to the board against the house, and ran them out to the outermost 4x4 boards.
From there I ran some of the "diagonals" as well as the outer most bit of the frame. You can also see I ran a cross board as sort of a center support, and while I have some other supports up here, I had to remove them after the fact as I decided I was going to run the boards perpendicular to the house instead of parallel.
From the get go I knew I wanted to have a tree in the deck, so I decided to go with a crape myrtle. They grow very quickly, and the kind I wanted to get has some nice pink/lavender blooms. It's one of the taller varities of crape. It's called a "Basham's Party Pink." Here it is just planted, and as you'll see shortly it's grown a good amount and has also bloomed quite nicely this year.
Here's another shot of it, about 8 months later. That was the span of time that passed from when I stopped working on it. What can I say I get a bit lazy from time to time. I added the last bit of bracing to the outer part of the deck, and I also ran an irrigation line to the crape itself so it always stays nice and watered when it needs to be.
And now, boarding! Yeah. Granted the deck was just an inch or so too long, but it's worked out decently enough. 
I'll make up for the difference with some steps. Fast forward some more boards and a little work with the saw. All in all it turned out decently well and for the first part I'm very pleased with it. Just a little more finishing around the hole where the crape comes out and Blammo.
Magic deck of fantasticness.Next year I'll work on the canopy and all that jazz. Hopefully I'll have seen another couple feet in growth out of the crape by then as well. And that's the end of my story for now.
