Replacing a Deck Column
Posted by Wayne
In the Summer of 2007 my wife and I were scheduled to get married, and to save money we had the bright idea of having the rehearsal dinner at our house. We both love having parties at the house and it definitely gives motivation to get stuff done, but I think getting married was stressful enough without having to rush through a bunch of house projects.
I knew at the party we were going to have a bunch of people on our backyard deck, and one of the support columns under the deck was a little iffy. The wood columns stand on the concrete below, so after a certain period of time the 8 foot tall 6″x6″ columns soak up water collected on the concrete and begin to rot. Only one of the columns appeared to have real issues and it needed to be replaced to support all of the weight above.
My dad kept telling me it would be a piece of cake to replace the old beam, but I seriously doubted it. My parents at the time were tearing down their old gazebo and they just happened to have some 6″x6″ pieces that were in good shape (but ugly and chipping paint), so I decided to give it a shot and kept my fingers crossed that the deck would not fall and crush us.
My dad showed up with a 10 foot 6″x6″ column, a 10 foot 4″ x 4″ column, a sledgehammer and a car jack
The existing column had sheet metal formed around the bottom where the rotting was occurring. It may have been something that the deck builders installed or a later homeowner because they thought it would help prevent or fix the rotting issue. I peeled it off with a crowbar and made a shocking discovery: the beam was not only rotting a little bit, it was rotted almost all the way through and had the consistency of foam. I don’t think that beam had been supporting any real weight for some time.
The first thing we did was cut the 4″x4″ piece to about 7 feet in length, and measured and cut the replacement beam and set it aside. We pushed the 4×4 up under the horizontal support of the deck about a foot away from the existing beam, and put the car jack underneath and started jacking. We jacked until it started carrying some weight and then moved forward slowly. We only wanted to raise the deck up high enough to slip out the old beam, so we gave it about a half a crank more and that was high enough.
I hit the old beam with the sledgehammer near the bottom to knock it out. We quickly swept the spot where the old beam had rested on the concrete and then placed the “new” 6×6 column in its place. Once we were satisfied that it was lined up correctly and level we lowered the car jack and the new beam was now holding the weight of the deck. I secured it at the top with some nails, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Nice and solid.
It seems like 99% of the things you go to do around the house don’t go smoothly, but in this case it did. My dad was right that this was very easy to do, but I think even he was surprised at just how easy this went.
The new beam is pretty ugly and I still need to scrape and paint it (the entire underside of the deck desparately needs painting), but I know it made a big difference in the solidity of the deck and I wasn’t worried about a bunch of people standing on it anymore. It should be good for another 20 years until someone else will have to come in and repeat our feat.
I love the picture below because in the background the old sliding glass door frame from the upper deck still lays exactly where it landed when I got angry and heaved it off the deck from above several months ago. It’s too cold out to go pick it up right now. More on replacing the sliding glass door later.
After
Total Cost: $0, Total Time: 45 minutes
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