August 19, 2008 – 9:12 am
I’ve been very busy this summer with an urgently needed home improvement project: Re-Decking our deck. I say it was urgently needed, mainly because the decking originally used was pine, which as you can see has not really held up against the New Hampshire weather:
After much research and deliberation, we decided to use a composite decking. The main factors were durability, and low maintenance. After looking at a lot of different options, we settled on Veranda brand Golden Cedar distributed by the local Home Depot.
Since we still wanted to be able to use portions of the deck during the summer, the process has been incremental: Ripping off a section of old boards, cleaning things up, placing new boards down. The previous decking followed a diagonal pattern, but we wanted to go with a straight pattern:
We needed to keep the wrap around portion in tact as long as possible as it serves as the outlet to the yard for our dog Keeper (The World’s Greytest Greyhound). So we planned to do this section in a 2 day weekend push:
Unfortunately, some of the decking was delivered with significant permanent stains (the planks that were resting on some oil stained plastic wrapping the bulk of the boards). I thought I could clean it, but that turned out to be too optimistic. So instead of getting the whole wrap around section done in 2 days as planned, we got 90% of it done in two days and waited 2 days for enough boards to be re-delivered to fill in the remaining 4 ft. (At least I didn’t over-order too much)
Here’s a view of how the deck is looking:
Left to do:
- 4 more feet on the wrap around section
- Raise the Trapezoid section 6 inches (maybe) and place decking
- 3 sets of stairs
- New Railing
The new railing will likely be a project for late fall or early spring. Mostly because we’re still deciding on what we want to do. Besides, we have to have some fun this summer!
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