This project has been a long time coming since we bought our place a few years ago.  The deck out back was in terrible shape when we bought the place  (handyman special) and 2 winters haven’t exactly been kind to the decking.  I can’t exactly call this a ‘how to’ article, but it’ll serve as a pretty good starting point for the novice handyman who needs a relatively easy project to start out with.

The before shots:

What’s wrong with it: very shaky railings, decking isn’t treated wood and was never treated by previous owner, steps aren’t attached, it’s a free standing deck that doesn’t have much support under the section that is closet to the house (no ledger, not bolted to the house), above all else it’s an eye-sore!

The first thing I did was to remove a few decking boards to see what the structure looked like and was pleasantly surprised.  The joists are in great shape, the posts were done properly and the entire structure was in-tact with no signs of rotting.  This is a big plus and will really decrease the cost since I can keep the existing foundation.  This seemed pretty strange that the hard part of the job was done right but the easier (IMO) finishing work wasn’t.

What I’m planning to do:

• remove the railings
• remove the decking
• remove the steps
• re-surface it, add new railings, do some simple landscaping around the edges, stain it and possible extend it was a level closer to the ground instead of adding steps

Step 1 is to remove the railings and here’s a tip, don’t go nuts with the destruction if you plan to try re-surfacing, take the time and disassemble it properly to perserve as much of the foundation as possible.

The railing is attached at each corner and mid-point of each side, it’ll be a pain to remove them but if I just rip them down I’ll end up damaging the joists and would have to replace those too.

I still need to do some planning on the finished product before re-building but at least I can get the tear-down done.

Looking forward to starting the tear down, stay tuned!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.