Decked out in Front!

15 Nov, 2022

We had plans to build decking, but weren’t sure on how we were going to do this during the house build. The house has a crawl space and sits elevated off the ground. To get into the front door, I had made makeshift steps, but now, we were ready to polish the front entrance with a deck. We heard feedback from several people in regards to Trex decking. Positives were that it lasted a lifetime, with less wear and tear and upkeep of traditional wood, and it came straight. Negatives were that it was expensive, got extremely hot if it was in direct sunlight, and became slippery when cold. We decided to go with traditional wood.  

First, what we had in mind had to become tangible. We marked borders, where we wanted it be. Then string was placed as a visual.  

We used concrete blocks. We leveled them and the deck was built on those blocks and the deck is floating, not anchored to the house. Our thinking was that this would be better in case there was future ground settling. 

Loads of brackets were used to construct the frame. Outside framing was treated 2x6 wood. 

We used this TREX protect joist tape before we laid the top layer of the deck to protect the wood underneath. 

We pre-painted all the top deck boards with exterior latex paint.  

I also finished painting some of the eaves that I had missed before. The exterior of the house was considered finished when we closed on the house construction in July 2022. We had 6 months to complete the exterior paint at that time. The exterior is made of concrete siding, so I wasn't particularly worried about weathering. The stuff is practically invincible. We did notice as the weather changed that some of the exterior caulking cracked and so we re-caulked with Big Stretch which in our experience does not crack as much. 

The deck support beams had the finished footing which was left floating for a future deck. 

Here is the finished product! We are very happy with this and I think it looks nice. It is still elevated off the ground, so we will revisit adding another step or ramp later. I was thinking a ramp on the garage side to make it accessible to anyone who can't do stairs. 

One more task completed! Thanks for sharing our house build journey with us!