The Re-Deckening

A couple years back, Violet and I made some serious modifications to our old haggard deck. At the time, the deck was only open at the West end with steps down in to the yard, and the other 2 sides had a wooden railing all the way around. 10 minutes with the reciprocating saw (pronounced "sawz-all") and the railing was no more. Already, it was much better. Next, we put together plans for laying down steps to completely surround the deck down in to the yard. A couple weeks later and we were very happy with the improvements.

Now it's deck season again and we decided to kick the deck in the balls again. This time, we need to fix up the old top decking, which is cracking all over from years of water damage. I've re-sealed the deck 0 times during our last 5 years in the house. Instead of replacing wood (expensive), we decided to power-wash, power sand, and power paint the surface.

In addition to polishing the deck down, I trimmed off the overhanging board edges and purchased some kick-ass cedar fascia board to trim it all out properly. This was also painted and I moved the deck lighting in to their new jigsawed-out homes.

The old white posts we have holding up the deck covering are weak and pathetic looking. It was decided to beef em' up a bit by getting some one-by-six whiteboard from the local lumbar yard (purchased at the same time as the fascia board), and fitting them snugly around the 4x4 posts. A few screws and some finishing nails and we've got some beefy new posts.