Home Renovation DIY – How We Built a Backyard Deck
A few years ago we decided to replace our patio with a deck. The original patio wasn’t that large, so building a deck in it’s place would give us much more room to enjoy the space.
As an added bonus, my husband is always looking for ways to cut down on the grassy areas that he has to mow, so anything that covers more ground space – he’s all for it. As the self proclaimed DIYers that we are, we of course jumped right into building it ourselves.
Replace Patio with A Platform Deck
We determined a 10ft x 20ft deck would take up the space the way we wanted and also make for easier math when calculating for the materials.
This how to guide from Lowe’s was a good starting point to building a simple box frame platform. Yes we had to look stuff up since we’re not master builders or anything here! So since we needed to be able to build footings, we had no choice but to break up the concrete patio.
Then we had to dig the holes for the footings. We bought treated wood for this step since they will be going into the ground. And we also bought even more concrete to mix up, fill into the ground holes, and harden around the posts. Then it was onto the framing!
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Framing A Platform Deck
After that it was laying the planks on top, and installing these pre-built railing sections. You can also build these yourself, but we bought them already put together to save some time.
Looking back, we probably wouldn’t have even added the railings if we had to do it all over again. However it does add a nice little extra detail.
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Adding Hand Railing to A Deck
Last we cut the top of the posts and bought post caps similar to these:
The Final Product: A Backyard Deck
All that’s left from here would be to stain or paint everything and seal it. All in all this cost us about $1000 for the materials and hardware we needed to do it ourselves, not including a stain and seal.
We did it over the course of about three weekends together. Building a deck like this was surprisingly simple and relatively inexpensive. If you are thinking about getting into home renovation, consider starting a project like this.
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