Friend's Backyard Deck

In 2013 I went on a vacation back in Oregon to do a lot of kiteboarding and see some friends. My friend David offered to let me stay at his house in Wilsonville and use it as base camp for my long awaited kiteboarding outings. However, upon arrival there was unusually little wind for several days in a row, putting the kiteboarding on hold. David and his wife Monika had just moved into this house and had plenty of home improvement projects going on. He mentioned that they wanted to replace the old deck as it was severely rotted and looked awful. I offered to at least start on the demolition as this is the fun part. I got the go-ahead and demolished the entire deck by the time they got home from work. David initially suggested we leave the ledger board mounted to the house in case we could reuse it for the new deck, but it was mounted in such a lousy manner that it nearly fell off the house on its own. Following the demolition, there were a few hours of stark realization that this act had put them on an accelerated path to building a new deck, as the sliding door to the backyard now opened to an impractical 2 ft drop to the ground.

Since there was still no wind in the immediate forecast, I figured "why not get started on this as well?" After talking with David and Monika about what they were looking for, we staked out an outline of the deck in the yard with some string. This technique made it easy to determine what size and shape would be most practical. Following a few iterations of this process, I drew up the sketch below.

As shown above, the basic idea was to have a single-level deck (the old deck was split level), so that the entire space could be utilized. They decided against building the deck at door-level to avoid an otherwise 3 ft drop for the steps from the deck down to the grass. Instead, the main deck area would be situated midway between the floor of the house, and ground level where the corner of the deck would be, requiring three steps from the yard to the deck, and 3 steps from the deck to the house.

The steps form the deck to the yard were positioned at a 45° angle to be more aesthetically pleasing, to accommodate wider steps so that multiple people could sit on them together, and to face in a direction that would make it easy to approach the deck from all directions.

The plan was agreed upon, and we began design of the frame. Using a blog written by a couple who built their own deck as an overall architecture reference (https://studiozerbey.com/deck-progress-week-two/), we specified size and quantity of lumber required. As shown below, the deck would be constructed atop a ledger board mounted to the house and two 4x8 beams supported by concrete blocks with galvanized steel cradles. This primary structure would support a series of joists (2x8 beams) spaced 16" apart. The decking itself would be screwed into these joists. The first step was to dig the holes to make a foundation for the concrete supporting blocks. 2ft x 2ft holes were dug deep enough to allow a 4" gravel layer and a 2" thick concrete tile to be placed on top of it. Getting all of the concrete blocks at a common height was accomplished using the method shown below.

The water levels in the tube will always match, so when the tube is lowered, the water level at the ledger board is lowered as well. This allows you to place objects at equal levels without having to use an extremely long leveling bar, or expensive laser level. After a few days of digging and placing blocks, we were ready to begin laying down the support beams.

After much figuring out, the logistics of how we could get the lumber we needed by the time we needed it (it was 4th of July weekend and we weren't the only people working on a home improvement project), we delivered the first batch of lumber to the backyard to allow us to build the underlying support structure. The joists were scheduled to arrive a few days later.

Once the support beams were in place, landscape fabric was laid down to prevent weed growth. It was weighed down with river gravel (very cheap and easy to move around). The joists could be laid down as well. This part went quite quickly as there was very little measuring or trimming to have to perform.

Only with all the joists in place, could we begin on the diagonal steps as they required the deck joists for support. The diagonal steps were designed to hide the supporting blocks from sight to give a clean look and the impression of floating steps. This technique was adapted from the deck in the blog linked to above.

Admittedly the steps turned out a bit more sturdy than necessary, but this was merely a product of how the beams came together for this orientation. Either way, solid steps are much nicer to step on than springy steps.

At this point I had run out of vacation time. Thankfully there were a number of windy days throughout the second half of the trip, so I still got my kiteboarding fix in. This was a really fun project, and I'm happy to have been able to do it for them! They finished the project  in the following weeks, adding the decking and the planters along the sides and they were very happy with the outcome!