The Deck - Footings and Framing

(March/April 2020) An integral part of our design was the addition of a deck to grant better access to our landscape. We’ve spent a lot of time in our garden in the last eight years (see Sustainability for the full story of how we got into gardening) and one struggle we’ve always had is that we’d either have to go through the garage or all the way around the garage in order to get back there. So, when Julie Ondo drew the initial vision (it has since changed slightly!) of how our deck would allow us to access a fully edible landscape, we knew Mike Kollman (and ourselves!) had made the right call. And of course, adding two sliding glass doors to our offices made access to the garden via the deck even easier.

But a new deck also meant we’d lose some growing space against the sheltered east side of the house. I’d been pollarding a French pussy willow and coppicing European hazels for several years. Clusters of daffodils brightened the backyard in the spring. I’d planted a Nine Herbs Charm garden, dyeing garden, and a medicinal garden there over the years.

Pussy willow pollard and hazel coppice in 2017

Daffodils cheer on the young hazels in 2013

Nine Herbs Charm, dyeing, and medicinal garden in 2013

The addition of a deck also meant a few changes to the windows on the lower level. First off, we were going to brick up the existing east-facing windows (one for the utility room and two in the family room) to make a solid, unbroken brick wall, which was needed for mounting two conduits for our upgraded 400-amp buried electric service, the inverter and disconnect for our solar panel system, and a (yet-to-be-determined-size) under-deck cistern for storing all our captured rainwater. The loss of those windows also required us add a north-facing window to the family room (just around the corner of the center picture above).

So, back in late January this year, I got the call from our GC that the concrete contractor was ready to pour the footings for the deck posts, which meant it was time to take down the hazels and the pussy willow :(

Lodge pole, anyone?

A nice hazel stool… let’s see if I can dig out the root ball and move it!

Soon enough, the footings were poured and set. And soon after that, Sebastian and his crew at Excellent Carpentry started the framing. One switch we had to make was re-orienting the stairs from being parallel with the house to accommodate the compressor and disconnect for our Mitsubishi minisplit heating/cooling systems, which couldn’t be placed under the deck.

It was cool to watch this take shape daily. And once the basic frame for the stairs was built, we could, for the first time, stand up on the deck to envision what the experience might be like once everything was finished.

We used Trex decking material over Azek because we appreciated the full transparency of Trex about the sustainable make-up of their product.

(Pay no attention to the new insulation or siding! We’ll post about those steps later!)

Though it’s tempting to continue to show the new railing and the construction of the 2nd stairway leading to the garage terrace, I’m going to stop here to build anticipation!