Replacing the Deck surface
Posted by Wayne
A couple of weeks before our July wedding, after I had replaced the support column below the deck, I woke up one Saturday morning, took out my trusty scraper and was not looking forward to a day of scraping, painting, and getting baked by the sun. After about 5 minutes of scraping and cursing the idiot who ever decided to paint the deck, I decided to just replace the deck surface with a composite material that didn’t need painting. I figured it would take the same amount of time to replace it as it would to try to make the existing surface look good.
As you can see in the picture below, the old deck surface didn’t look very good and this picture was taken a full year before I made the decision to replace it. It was really peeling, the wood was rotten, it just didn’t make sense to paint it again.
Before
I borrowed my parents trailer and went down to Home Depot to buy 18 16′ composite lumber boards. This is an expensive choice compared to regular lumber, but I just wanted to put it down and never worry about it again. The deck is exactly 16′ wide, which was nice because I wouldn’t have to do much cutting.
The old lumber came off very easy. At first I spent a bit of time pulling nails from each board, but eventually realized I could just as easily rip the entire board off without pulling any nails. Thinking ahead, I only pulled off the first five or so boards so I’d have something to stand on while I was putting down the new boards.
The support beams that ran under the deck were spaced at 20″ intervals, while I discovered that the composite material called for a maximum of 14″ intervals. This has to do with the fact that the composite isn’t as stiff as regular lumber, so if it were installed across such a wide space it would flex downwards when you walk on it. Rather than rip out all of the supports and start from scratch I just bought a bunch of 2×6’s to install in between the existing supports. This meant that I had supports at 10″ intervals, a nice solid support surface.
Installing the 2×6’s just required that I install metal hangers on the house and horizontal support structure of the deck and screw them all together. This wasn’t tough to do, just time consuming. This wasn’t a one person job, so my dad came over to help and ended up staying to help with installing the composite boards as well.
After I had installed the additional supports I began the task of installing the composite surface on top. This was very easy, but again it was a little time consuming because of all the screws that it required. My dad would pre-drill the holes and I would come in right after him to install the screws. I used nails as spacers between the boards before screwing them down so I got an even spacing between all of them.
Once the new surface was installed I replaced a couple of railing posts, ripped out the gate at the top of the stairs, and painted the railing a nice bright white.
The new support column I installed, the new supports under the surface, and the new surface itself made the deck very attractive and sturdy. At our wedding rehearsal dinner/bbq we had a good 20 people on the deck and it never budged. Before all of my work our 10 pound dog would run down the deck stairs and I could feel it inside the house.
After
Total Cost: $550, Total Time: 2o hours
Leave a Reply