Its all in the layout

The rear deck is essentially done. The big "if" out there was how to do the ballisters on the outside of the deck to make the vertical portion of the railing and associated covering of hte lower part of the deck. The carpenter and I disagreed on how to layout the ballisters as he was looking for a wider space between them then I wanted. So, we decided to put both of our designs in side-by-side and see what happened. Well.....we both agreed that mine was the better of the two.

This is a shot of the inside of the railing from deck height. As you can see, the tighter ballisters make everything look more compact and angular. I really like the look of this from all angles. Also, doing it this way should get us a great degree of control over the twisting and bowing that happens with treated lumber that is this small. Its VERY hard to keep this from happening so all we can hope for is to minimize it as much as possible.

Here is a shot from the ground in the back. As you can see, we decided to run them all the way to the ground creating a barrier between the lower part of the deck and the outside. We have a little bit of cement laid under there to allow for some storage, but we mainly will be looking to just minimize what ends up getting growing , gets blown or thrown in there. I can only imagine how much I would have thrown down there as a kid.

This is a close up of the trim we had put around the windows before the siding. As you can see, this is the same black as the windows. This trim is called LP, or laminated plywood and was painted with two coats of paint at the production facility to give it a minimum of 10yr life span before it needs to be re-painted. This is also what we ended up using for the corners on the house as well. As a result, we are going to have two items on the house that will need maintenance over the years; something I was hoping to avoid.

Here is a shot of the house last night. Starting to really look good. Hoping to have a fully sided house next week.