Rear Deck Framing

The carpenter's did their usual speedy work yesterday and threw up almost all of the deck frame. Its amazing how big it feels. Last minute we moved the deck out about 5ft to make it bigger, and I think we are going to like that decision for the rest of our time in this home. It was absolutely the right decision. We are going to be able to put our patio table out on this area and sit and enjoy morning or evening sun on this deck.

Here is the deck from the back. As you can see, they have the stairs built coming off the back of the deck and are just left to put the treads on. Its a little bit hard to see on the right side, but the corner post is not sitting on anything right now. This deck is constructed a bit different then most in the sense that the main support of the deck is actually derived from a spot inside of the corner post. This gives the look of the deck amost "floating." The original intention was for this to be used with a very nice floating railing system that worked in conjunction with the ballisters, but in the end this is not going to be the way we build the railings/ballisters. As a result, we have to add 4 more piers for the corner supports to be anchored to. The main reason was that we were worried about the 4x4 posts twisting as they aged without being anchored to a footing. So, we are anchoring 4 more posts, and we will be using cable bolts to bolt the rest of the posts in at the deck level.

Here you can see the aforementioned support for the deck. The 6x6 posts are the main vertical support along with the actual house itself where the main ledger board was mounted with 1/2" thick cable bolts through the wall. The other thing that I realized yesterday is we have way more room under the porch then I thought we were going to have. As a result, we will be able to use this space as storage more readily then I thought.

This is a stair stringer. The carpenter doubled up the stringer for both a support and design perspective. One of the pieces of the deck that we kept from the architects design is making the back stairs 4 1/2' wide. at 54", this gives the deck a much more open look, and will work very well in defining the space between the deck in the garage. Once we have a set design for the garage (coming soon) I am hoping we will be able to acheive a sort of "courtyard" for the house where we will be able to have a second area for outdoor related enjoyment. I have an idea in my head of how this should go, lets see if I can make it work.