Building a wood deck

[PaulaSue]

Any tips?

What size did you do?
Did you DIY?
Did you go with regular or Trek wood?

 

[golfgal]

I would go with Trex or similar (which is not wood just so you know). It costs a lot more but the upkeep is so much less. Build as big of a deck as you can. Most decks are so small you can't fit anything there. There is one deck down the road from us that is AWESOME. They have a walkout basement and under the deck they have a screened in porch. I think that is a GREAT idea.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Just put in a deck last month. We went with composite decking, don't remember the brand off hand. Now the framing is wood as an FYI to you, even if you go with composite.

Our composite is 100% fake. There are composites out there that are not 100% fake. Some of them have wood in the composite, which is an issue for where we are. I am in a river valley and we have fog every morning. Mold is a problem here, so that is why we went with 100% fake.

Our deck is 12X28 for the most part. We have a 14' kick out.

No DIY here. We are not handy like that.

The composite was about 4000 more than real wood. In the end it is worth it if you have ever had to stain decking. Over time you will spend that on stain and it is a PITB.

Here it is. We still have to stain the framing below. We could do "wraps" on it but we are just going to stain it.

 

[PaulaSue]

Mystery Machine, VERY Pretty!

Mind if I ask what ball park that was? 10 k, over or under?
Also what are your posts? wood, Trex or metal?

 

[The Mystery Machine]

The railing is composite. The framing is wood. It was about 13,000K.

This is our second deck we built. We are on house #4.

I mean wood is nice, we just wanted low maintenance this time around. We plan on selling this house in 5yrs.

 

[luvmy3jewels]

DH just built a fairly large wooden deck on the back of our house (I think it is somewhere around 1,000 sq. ft). The materials cost us a little under $2,000, including pressure treated lumber, nails, etc. It took him and his dad 5 days to complete it (and they are not super experienced carpenters). We're planning on staining it next weekend, so I don't know how much stain is going to cost us. Dh described the deck to the contractor who built our house and he said that it would have cost around $1,500 if he had hired carpenters to build it.

I would have loved to use Trex or another composite, because maintenance would be so much easier, but it just wasn't in the budget at this point.

The one tip that I would give you, if you are going to diy, is invest in a nail gun! I think dh found his to be a life/arm saver for this project!!

 

[PaulaSue]

Thanks for the tip. I am seeing a Daddy's day gift in the near future

 

[PaulaSue]

Btt