GroupWBench

When we started our bathroom remodel we also had another project in mind. We wanted to put a small deck out back. When were preparing to paint the house we planned to update our front porch railings. I wanted to be careful about the job and not make a mess of it. Since the back was pretty much identical to the front, we thought we'd replace that railing first and see how it went.

Since we don't have any pictures of the back porch before we started, here is the front so you can see what the railing looked like:

And here is the back after we took apart the railing:

It was really surprising how much removing the railing opened up that little space. Ivy and I stood there and both said, "You know, a little deck here would be just about perfect." Notice the dearth of anything growing there in front of the concrete porch. It turns to mud when it rains. When it isn't raining, it is fine dust and dirt that the dogs bring in for us. We can't really get anything to grow out there because of the drought driven water restrictions and the fact that our dogs romp and play there and basically kill anything starting to grow. Decking that in would give someplace other than inside the house for a lot of that dirt to drop off of them.

So rather than rebuilding the railing, we decided to put in a deck. This was after we started the bathroom project, but we decided that we would stop the bathroom work after we replaced the vanity so that we could work on the deck outside before the blazing heat of summer turned the job into a brutal effort.

We decided to do a floating deck – not floating in air, mind you. Just not attached to the house or to posts stuck in the ground. We used blocks set on the ground that hold up the deck. You can't tell here, but there is a pretty good slope to the ground there. That meant leveling out a few rows for the blocks to sit on. We dug down and then filled them with road base. You can see where Tucker was helping here.

Once the blocks were down, we added 4"x4" posts, attached the frame, and then started hanging the joists. We decided to make the deck level with the concrete patio. We also made sure we could extend the deck if we decided to.

The work was pretty physical. We moved loads of rocks and dirt and the boards were not lightweight things to be tossed around. We were certainly glade we were doing the job before the heat of summer took hold.

Once the deck frame was complete, we clad it in Trex so that we wouldn't have a lot of maintenance to do. No waterproofing or staining it every year. It was pretty easy to work with and went on nice. I think we'll add a permanent step or two off of the end of it at some point, but all of it is low enough to the ground that we can walk on and off of it safely – no railing needed.In the mean time, we picked up a cheap plastic set of steps that are doing the job. For now though, we have a nice deck that is in the shade from mid-day on that we can sit on as we watch the dogs leaping over the deck as they rush to protect us from the dangerous wildlife (deer and squirrels) or the evil vehicles (delivery trucks and neighbors in their golf carts).

Once we finished the deck, we started back in on the bathroom over the summer. More than once we congratulated ourselves for not trying to build the deck in the summer heat.