the big deck

Our new home has 3 exterior doors: a front door and two back doors. The first back door is by where we park our cars and it enters into the laundry room. The second back door is a sliding glass door and it opens into the family room. When we first bought the house, we knew we wanted to put a large deck on the backside of the house right outside the sliding glass door. So when the house was installed, we had cement steps poured by the other two exterior doors, and we put some temporary wooden steps outside that door.

After a few weeks of moving into our home last summer, we decided to take the front porch that was in front of our old house, and set it up outside the sliding glass door. It was a wooden, 8x8 porch and it fit well outside the sliding glass door. Then we just moved the wooden steps to the side of it to accommodate the new set-up. We knew it wasn't what we really wanted, but it worked out great until we could afford to install the real deck.

This is what it looked like:

We've saved up our money all year, and this spring we got some bids from local contractors to see how much a new deck would cost. The contractors all said that it would cost about $4000 to build a 10x30 wooden deck with 2 sets of steps. That was way more than what we could afford this year, and we were discouraged that it wouldn't be built this summer. But then the last contractor told us it would cost about $2500 if we did a lot of the labor ourselves. We were happy with that price, and happy to do some of the work ourselves to keep the cost down.

Construction began the week after July 4. Josh and I moved away the old porch and the steps, and then Josh dug out some holes to place the cement footers in. Then Bill (the contractor) came and built the frame and got it all level. Josh helped him secure the frame foundation to the house, and he helped Bill cut and carry the frame boards to the back of the house, and helped him put it together.

Then Bill started cutting the boards to attach to the frame, and showed us the pattern for cutting and placing them. That night, Josh and I finished cutting and routing them and then we carried them over and placed them all on the frame.

The next step was to build the railings. While Bill cut and measured all the railings, Josh and I screwed a bazillion (it felt like it) screws into the deck boards to secure them to the frame. Then Bill built the steps, and while he was doing that, I sanded all the railings and the deck, which took an entire day.

The whole construction process took 7 days. After the deck was complete, then Josh spent two evenings staining the entire thing. He picked a neutral color, and I think it's so gorgeous!

I just love my new deck! I love to sit out on it in the evenings, when the sun is behind the house and the whole deck is in the shade. It feels so nice during that time! Sometimes when Josh and I are out sitting on the big deck, we tease each other about just how big it is...like that SNL skit a few years ago when the guys were sitting on a deck and bragging about their deck sizes! You know the one? Anyhoo... Now that the deck is done, I'm saving up to buy some patio furniture to really take advantage of the huge amount of outdoor space! And I can't wait to have a BBQ with friends this summer to really christen it!