The Pisgah Project: The Pisgah Project

TLDR: Built a deck and a bath house. Nothing and nobody has fallen down the hill. Yet. Lots of pics.

Soon after completing the construction of the tiny A-frame in 2022, I began working on a 12'x12' deck. Because of the steep hillside, and my general lack of experience, I don't lay out the site with string-lines like you might if the ground were flat. Instead, I create a perimeter of the build using lumber, then attempt to level it and square it up in order to determine the location of the deck foundation.

I nailed the center of the board on the far-side to a tree. This made the process of squaring up the foundation locations fairly easy as I only needed to adjust the locations of the near-side corners. Note, the deck would not be attached to the tree; rather, everything was referenced about 1' away from the tree.

In order to reduce the height of the beams needed on the far-side (downhill) of the deck, I dug out several yards of dirt to create a shelf in the hillside. This has been my strategy to adapt to the hillside, minimizing how much I disturb the hill and tree roots that are holding it together.

Again, using the squared and level 'perimeter' of lumber as a reference, I set the 6"x6" posts

The deck would be framed on top of the posts, and this band of boards along the perimeter of the post-foundation would be removed after the joists were framed.

Sitting atop the 6"x6" posts are girders constructed from three 2"x6". The joists are hung from the outside girders, and supported underneath by the girder in the middle.

Here's the finished deck, trimmed with Simpson bracing/fasteners, and reinforced laterally with 4"x4" braces.

No safety rail...helps maintain that element of danger.

Some fall colors.

Many of the trips to our glampsite have been 2-3 day outings, supported by a portable RV toilet and sponge-baths using wet-wipes. Its workable, but prohibitive for longer trips. The amount of hiking up and down the hillside to shuttle tools and building supplies each day of construction just leaves you feeling icky and sticky each night. Likewise, serving as a basecamp for MTB excursions into the forest imposes the same end-of-day scenario: I really need a shower. And I really need to ditch the portable RV toilet (and the process of dumping it at the end of a trip). So, the next project on the list is to construct a bath house, complete with a shower, sink and composting toilet.

Get out the shovel, start digging.

I disassembled the remaining original 8'x8' tentpad located at the middle of the property, hauled the framing up the hill to the top corner of the property, and slid it down to its new location.

I then reattached the deck boards. For a couple of trips, the deck simply located the portable RV toilet and 'port-a-privy' next to the A-frame.

The plan was to utilize 6'x8' of the deck (leaving ~2' of porch) to construct the bath house, and to construct it as light-weight as possible. The 8'x8' deck lacks the structure to support framed walls and roof. So, I opted to reinforce the perimeter of the deck with 4"x6" beams, and use 4"x4" posts to support a simple shed-roof and establish the edges/corners of the walls.