A new walk out cedar deck

Sorry for not keeping up with the blog, It has been about a month since we have last updated the blog. We have been busy on a large project for the last 3 weeks, and that is what we are going to review today.

This project is up in Port Huron MI.  It is in a very hilly area, around the Black River, kinda feels like being up north in Michigan. There is extreme grade changes under the deck, one side is about 30" off of grade, and the other side is about 9' off of grade. On both sides of the deck there is 30' - 40' drop off cliffs, so site access was a challenge.

Here is a before picture   

The design pictures

We demo'ed the old deck in about 4 hours, it was all cantilevered framing from the house joist. There was only one support post on the old deck, we had to add 21 posts with post hole footings.

With the extreme grade conditions, and some Ivy ground cover under the new deck space, Digging the post hole footings was not much fun.

 

After day two we had the footings done and it took the rest of the week to complete framing portion of the deck, which was around 800 sq ft.

In week two we started by installing  the deck boards(all screws), on the upper level.  There is three seperate areas where the decking is running on 45 degree angles and separated by center seam boards to avoid butt joints.

Once we installed the decking on both levels we cut in the picture frame border

 The opposite 45 degree angles with the center seam board.

Next we went onto installing the two tiered fascia and rail posts

Finally we installed the 2x4 builders railings with posts caps and deckorators classic balusters. We also pre-stained the 2x4 rails and 4x4 posts with Messmers UV Plus natural cedar.

Now we are into week 3 where we built the stairs, and completly stained the deck

A few final pictures from the roof

Thanks for reading