Encore

The poor, unfortunate, much maligned deck. It is customary to chastise it mercilessly in a time honoured tradition stretching back as far as 2004 when it made its triumphant appearance in Ireland. It promised so much, for ten minutes it looked so cool and made us feel all Scandinavian. 

We Can Get So Much More From Our Decks

• Don’t let a friend of a friend of your butcher who once spent an afternoon watching Discovery Shed  have a crack at it. It will be sagging and pooling water within a week.
• 4 x 2s are not joists. They never have been and never will be.
• 900mm is not adequate “joist” spacing.
• Use joist hangers. They’re cheap.
• Screw it. Blasting it together in 15 minutes with a Paslode nailer using interior 50mm nails will not do.
• If you see anyone even contemplating using grooved boards, stage an intervention. Much like stopping a friend texting an ex, they might not want to hear it but believe me in the cold light of day they won’t be able to thank you enough. No good has ever come of a grooved deck board.
• Unless there is a genuine  safety issue do not , I repeat do not put a handrail and balustrading around it. One of the few sights in life which can make me cry is that of the square (12’x12’) ground level deck in the middle of the half acre back garden circumnavigated with 1 metre high handrail. Unless you’re going to use it to train a sheepdog don’t do it.
• 28 nails through the rim joist will not securely hold a post that you couldn’t be bothered concreting into the ground.
• Support the joists at mid span.
• Paint it. Yes paint it – teal, lavender, olive, aqua blue whatever. Under no circumstances apply a “cedar” stain. It’s just depressing.

Decking is sorry for all the dislocated elbows and sprained ankles. It’s done its time, it’s rehabilitated and ready to be reintegrated into society. We’re back on the road again. What goes better with renewed prosperity than a nice bit of decking?

Only this time it will be different, our lessons have been harshly learned. This time we know enough to co– opt all we’ve seen on PBS America and make decks the features they are meant to be andnot the sad, sorry, depressing ground level platform we have a history of somehow conspiring to make them. A heap of pallets could do that for us. This time we know enough to give Podge Landscaping a wide berth.

Let’s channel Savannah, Georgia; raised wraparound decks, porches, enclosures, pergolas, arbors. The neatly stacked rows of treated timber are all down there in the builder’s yard, biding their time. We’ve changed, they’ve changed.  We’re all grown up now. This time it will be beautiful; whadda ya say folks?