Here is a picture of the finished deck before we stain and seal it. It took us a weekend to finish the deck. We are very happy with the result.

After we decided that we needed to build a deck, I googled “how to build a wood deck". And, this website showed up: http://www.deckplans.com/. We browsed through the website, and were surprised that it was actually pretty easy to build a deck by ourselves. I downloaded one of their free plans and modified it to create the design I wanted. Then, we went to the local Home Depot to order the materials and had them delivered instead of carrying them home by ourselves (it saved us a lot of effort and the delivery charge was very reasonable.)

We spent most of the time on setting up the foundation of the deck. We had a water outlet outside the house and air vents for the crawl space, so we had to dig many holes to bury the concrete blocks to keep the deck lower than the water outlet. We also spent quite a lot of time on leveling the foundation. After the foundation was done, the rest was easier. We fastened the surface boards with deck screws. It was easier and less noisy than hammering nails. We left about 1/4″ of space between each surface board to provide drainage for rain and water.

Yesterday, I was frustrated with a plan that didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. Instead of sitting in front the computer and thinking about the failed plan, I redirected my energy and went out to build myself another deck. I felt much better after building the deck. At least it was not a total failure yesterday. My husband was very surprised when he came home last night to see the deck. Now, we are thinking about how to connect the two decks together to create the Japanese engawa style deck. Stay tuned!