Monday, March 1, 2010

West Portal Redwood Deck

Here's one from the archive. Completed several months ago, this was a deck replacement project for a couple living in the West Portal neighborhood of San Francisco. The scope of work here was to simply "replace in-kind"; meaning, to remove the 30+ year old redwood deck and replace it with a new deck that maintained the same design, size and shape as the old deck. The only deviations from the original design were in order to satisfy the building department by bringing the new deck "up to code" (raising the guard rail height and installing a hand rail for the steps.) Below is a glimpse at the before-and-after.





Here, the main deck is completed and the stairs are in progress. The decking is 2 inch X 4 inch redwood. Available in 20 foot lengths, the decking runs continuous from end-to-end with no breaks. Using a product called "ShadoeTrack", the decking is attached to the structure with screws from the underside so that all fasteners are concealed. The guard rail posts were rough-cut to length and taken back to the shop for fabrication.




One challenge to the project was access. With no tradesman's alley, the only choice was to bring the new material through the house to the back yard. The old deck was dismantled in sections and stacked temporarily on one side of the property while new materials were stored on the other. After the new deck was completed the old deck was removed, piece by piece, through the house and then hauled away.



The finished product...






A nice design feature from the original deck, the stair treads are framed, or "boxed", using 1 inch X 4 inch redwood. This gives the treads a heavier, "slab-like" appearance. The treads were face screwed using 3" stainless steel trim-head screws.



1 comment:

  1. Nice and clean...I like the redwood, are you planning on allowing it to age naturally, or paint to match house (which would be a shame,)the only criticism is, the steps should have had blind fasteners, it would have made the transition from stair to deck seamless.

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