Deck Design on a Dime

When your deck goes from being a rustic and rugged backyard escape to being an obstacle course/death by 1,000 splinters torture device hybrid, you might want to consider an upgrade.  At least that's what we did.  Despite fancying ourselves rather tough and fearless (I mean, we've eaten Anna's cooking and lived to tell), we knew it was time for a new deck when every trip to the garage meant staring down the face of death (or at least its 4th cousin, twice removed--a sprained ankle).  But how can you help keep the costs of a project like this down when you are working on a tight budget?  D-I-Y, naturally.

While neither Don nor I are master carpenters, we are quick studies and since we were already feeling quite emboldened (coming off of our victory last summer in constructing a backyard chicken coop), we figured, "We can do this!"  Well, on second thought...

Our first step on this odyssey of woodworking discovery was to tear up all of the old lumber that was cracked, split, and treacherously uneven.  Heck, some of the boards weren't even nailed down anymore.  Okay, well I suppose that WAS a help to us in the long run.  This part of the process only took a few hours!!!

The next part of this construction project was to calculate exactly how much wood we would need to fit the dimensions of the deck we had in mind.  We wanted all of the boards to go in the same direction this time, unlike the last go-round.  Also, we came across a curve ball... in case you didn't know this, a 2x6 (the 2x4's more "robust" cousin) is not ACTUALLY 2 inches by 6 inches.  Rather, it is only 5 and a half inches wide. Math thinking caps on!  After we figured out how many 2x6s we would need (17-10 footers and 45-16 footers) it was off to the Home Depot and Lowe's to do some pricing.  Since this isn't a plug for one store over the other, I won't say which one we chose, but I will say that Home Depot charges $1 to make a single cut while Lowe's charges $.25 (or in our case, FREE!).

As tempting as it sounded to make 8+ trips back and forth to the store with no less than 5 feet of wood hanging out of the back of our Explorer, we opted to have it delivered.  It did cost $50 but it saved us a whole day spent loading and unloading our lumber and making right turns that would make a semi driver flinch.  So, bright and early (9 am), a very helpful gent showed up in our front yard driving a forklift with a pallet of wood just for us!

Our initial estimate of "This should only take around 3 hours" turned into 7 hours, 3 scraped up knuckles, and splinters galore.  The following pictures are pre- and post- renovation shots of the deck.   

             

             
 
At the end of the day, we stood back and admired our handiwork, thinking rather highly of ourselves, and contemplating the possibility of building our next house on our own.  HA! Got ya!  We still have a few more years to enjoy our new deck and the escape it provides here at the Hartford Homestead.