We reached decision time this past weekend, and awarded the job to a local contractor. He and his assistant will start work this morning; reluctantly, he asked me if it was OK to start at 7 AM, to which I replied that I am usually up between 5 AM and 5:30 AM. He and I went to Menards Monday morning and payed for the materials; delivery is Wednesday afternoon.

The new deck for the North of the house, from the driveway to poolside, will be replaced in cedar, as will the stairway to the upper level near the kitchen. All the replacement upright poles will be 4″ x 4″ treated wood placed on brackets in concrete footings (the old were simply buried in the ground). For the patio area just outside the family room we selected 16-inch pavers in a light color, to lighten up the area under the upper deck. I will work on replacing the floor boards in the upper deck section as time permits. I will post photos of the progress of the deck, in hopes it will help others; I thank everyone for all the comments I received to my earlier blog entry, as it helped Sandy and I a great deal in reaching a decision on how to proceed.

A portion of the old deck, a few years ago.

The remaining portion of the deck, shown in the bottom of the photo, will have to wait until next year, or until the next large commission job comes in.

This means that, for now, I will be free to start a large new project for a local church, in partnership with one of the local cabinet shops.

— Al Navas

Warning: This is not furniture-making; it probably falls into the carpentry or general contracting arena.

I learned recently that (cedar) wooden decks don’t last forever. The entire deck on the North side of the house must be replaced; also, the deck in front of the family room, and close to the swimming pool, must be replaced in its entirety. And new supports must be installed under the upper deck to stabilize the entire structure.

The bids are coming in. While the cost will be significant, it is to be expected after 35+ years in use. Most of the work will involve shoring up the upper deck, replacing the staircase, replacing the lower deck where the table and chairs are, and replacing the deck that starts near the bottom-right of the photo and runs to the upper level (click on the photo, to enlarge the image).

I have some questions I hope my readers can address, to help me decide how to do this work:

1. Have you ever repaired or replaced a large deck?
   • Is it best left to a contractor, or
   • Was it easy enough that you were able to tackle it?
   • What material did you use? The newer composites, or simply replaced with cedar?
   • If your old deck was cedar, were you able to reuse any of the old cedar boards?
   • If you were able to reuse old cedar boards, did you bother sealing the old nail/screw holes?
2. Have you ever repaired a sagging elevated deck?
   • How did you do it?
   • Did you use temporary support columns,
   • Or did you simply install new ones, and then removed the old ones?
3. Did you do all the work yourselves, or did you hire a contractor to do it?
4. What are some of the “gotchas” I should be be looking for?
5. What would you do differently, were you to do it over?

I appreciate your comments!

— Al Navas