The deck replacement

Since 2022 when we purchased the house, the deck was one of the places where we knew that we would be dealing with quite soon due to its severe state of degrade. The nearby woods contributes ad well to keep the high level of moist that added another level to the equation creating a lovely layer on top of the deck that would transform the surface into “ice” even in summer when wet. The boards were quite rotten and consumed and there was a huge risk of tripping, falling or simply stepping on something. The risk of injury was getting higher by the day. So, we needed to act!

I placed an order in April and waited for weeks for the order to arrive. It didn’t! I got a call from the local shop informing me that the measures were not available. I got almost insane! I lost almost 3 weeks of my vacation days doing nothing that I actually planned. Well, time was well spent on other things, but the idea was to get the whole deck replaced in April… not June! Anyhow, you do what you can….

I received everything in May and of course they placed the whole thing in the parking place. So I needed to move everything by hand a bit closer to where the deck should be. All those tiny steps were not planned in no book…. but here we are.

I used those first weeks in April to dismount the whole thing and the idea was to preserve at least something. Maybe for a minor deck or something….

Almost immediately I noticed that the deck boards were done, there was absolutely not much to preserve. Still, I placed everything that looked “better” aside.

I tried not to dismount everything by cutting and hammering the structure apart, instead, I used my tools getting a huge amount of metal! Crazy!

The job was not easy at all. It took a bit of patience and stubbornness to remove the whole structure like I wanted and being alone did not speed up the process at all.

Here are some images of the process:

The next thing to do was to clean everything and set up the build like I had it in my mind. Luckily I have a great neighbor that knows it’s business and he is amazing, great knowledge and skills despite his age. He helped us with great information and “howto”.

Now that everything was ready, I was ready to start the build process. Luckily my son was there with me and I got that help that often is very appreciated during these activities. Four hands are much faster than two. Than again, it was a blessing that my neighbor came out and pointed to a fail that we needed to correct…. just in time! Lucky me! Anyhow, the result is shown in the below images:

As you may notice in the last bottom right image, a part of the deck is made with 35x35cm large cement plates that will accommodate the whole cooking area thus preventing the damage of the new deck with coal or boiling water/oil etc. I will create a stone wall around the grill in order to protect it from the elements and provide some extra storage as well.

The next and final step is the build of the stone plant bed around the deck. But that part of the project is another story that will be documented inside a different article! 🙂

Kind Regards,
Aramis