After seeing many a house with a nice metal boot-scraping grate inserted into the deck, we decided it was time to pull the trigger. I called Fred Spencer of the Mountview Inn and asked him the various questions about grates, installation, steel vs. aluminum, etc.
I measured out possibilities in front of our door and decided that 3 or 4 board depth and width of the entire door was the way to go. The joists come out perpendicular to the door, 16″ on center, so i figured 32″ wide would fit perfectly at the entryway.
Fred actually had a piece of aluminum 17″ deep left over from another larger job which would fit right in place of 3 deck boards. He had to band the outside with a piece of aluminum, but called me the next day saying it was ready to go. The 1″ thick aluminum grate 17″ wide (deep?) by 32″ wide was $196.10. Not bad for something that would not only knock the mess off the bottom of our boots BEFORE entering the house, but would also probably outlive the stained boards on the deck without rusting.
First i placed the grate on the deck and penciled out the width as well as marked the existing screws.
Setting the grate, i used my handy-dandy DeWalt impact gun to remove each original screw.
A few heads were stripped, so i left them to be pried out later with the claw hammer.
I measured the decking thickness at a heavy 15/16″, so i set my skilsaw depth accordingly and cut the ends of the three deck boards in the middle of the joists.
Some careful prying and wiggling, as well as some precision chiseling where the round of the blade couldn’t go far enough without cutting into keeper decking and i had a nice clean rectangle to fit my grate into. Sadie looked on, probably wondering why i was ruining her rug launch pad to the outside world.
I cleaned around the straight edges with my chisel, blew off the saw dust and test fit the grate into the hole – perfect the first time! Measure twice, cut one.
I figured that since the whole was open and it would soon be getting more than its fair share of ice, salt, water, dirt, etc – i might as well seal up the wood all the way around with some Sikkens Cetol SRD.
Once the Sikkens was thoroughly applied, i shoveled in a mess of gravel from the driveway (the finishing touches) and laid the grate back in place.
Whamo! A sweet need Fred Grate ready to take on whatever Vermont cares to dole out.
One day from ‘ordering’ to pickup, $1 worth of Sikkens and screws, and $196.10 later – who could ask for anything more. Thanks Fred! If you’re interested in getting a steel or aluminum grate of your own, or need some other metal welding work done, give him a call at (802) 496-2426. And if you head to the compound on Vickery Hill this winter, no need to take your boots off outside…just scrape them off and come on in.
