I just finished doing a major rebuild on my 450 sq ft deck. I’ve done a couple of smaller fixes in the past, but I think this might have been the biggest update yet. The house was built in 1979, and I bought it in 1981. The original decking was 1x 4 knotty cedar – wherever there was a knot between joists, you could easily put your foot through it – remember, this is a 2nd story deck. The railing was a joke. You could stand at one end and shake it and the other end would whip like a rope. The stairs were threatening to fall off and take half the deck with them. The really scary part is that some of my neighbors still have their original decks without doing any repairs.
My first repair was about 15 years ago, when I replaced several rotting joists, removed the original stairs, jacked the whole deck back up about 4 inches to level, replaced the railing, put new stairs on in a better location, and new decking. Did I mention that all the original wood was not outdoor wood or pressure treated?
About 5 years ago, I replaced the decking again – it doesn’t last very long out here in the northwest. But this year, I noticed that parts of the main beam holding the whole thing up was rotting, so I jacked the deck up and replaced the entire main beam from end to end, with new supports posts and cement footings. While doing this I saw a couple of joists that were rotting……so I ended up tearing half the deck off the house, tore all the decking off, and replaced all the structure with pressure treated wood. It would have been easier to tear the thing down to start with, rather than replacing things from the bottom up……
Now I’ve just finished the new decking just in time for the rainy weather to start. I’ll have to treat it when I can, but there’s not enough time to let it completely dry before the weather comes in. Maybe I can enjoy it for a few nice days that we have left. Now comes miller time.
