New Deck

We moved to a new house to be closer to our family in 2016.  The house had a deck that was built probably about 20 years ago.  The deck boards were pressure treated lumber that had been painted several times and were splitting and generally looked pretty shabby.  The deck also was very low to the ground yet it had railings all around which we thought blocked the views of the pretty back yard.  Here are some “before” photos:

Before starting the project, we got a building permit and the city inspector came out to have a look at the existing deck and talk about my plans.  He had some great suggestions to help simplify things (I always seem to make things too complicated) and in general was great to work with.  So after removing the rails, stairs, and deck boards, we found tbe underlying structure to be in pretty good shape.  There were a few things to fix, though – there was only one  2×10 beam supporting the outer edge, so we doubled that up and through-bolted everything solidly together.  The ledger board against the house was just nailed on, so we attached it securely to the house rim joist with long LedgerLOK screws.  We doubled up the deck’s rim joists and added blocking to make the structure stiffer.  We added a single cantilevered step around most of the deck and a planter box with low voltage lighting along the back.  We built a small brick patio on the lower side, which is built on compacted sand and Brock Paver Base panels. 

The patio bricks are Courtland pavers (color: Autumn Blend) from Menards and the deck boards and fascia are Veranda ArmorGuard composite decking (color: Brazilian Walnut) from Home Depot.   The brick pattern we used did not require any bricks to be cut.  We used 20 foot deck boards and a picture-frame style border so there are no butt ends in the field of the deck.  The deck boards are fastened with ArmorGuard hidden fasteners and for those that required face-screwing we used FastenMaster Cortex plugs to hide the screws.