I Built A Deck For My Front Yard

This was my front yard. The driveway is made of concrete and it flowed around from the street to the front door. Very functional, but bland and stark and incredibly uninviting!

This was the plan. A simple frame to sit on the concrete (well, not ON the concrete, but more on that later) covered in decking boards in a boardwalk configuration.

Watch the YouTube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJSWrv45vBA

The frame was made of pressure treated pine, 2x4s. These are rated for moderate moisture but not in-ground exposure.

All the boards were cut to length, according to the plan, using a mitre saw.

Then all the timber was laid out ready to be joined. In retrospect the noggins (those small pieces between the long lengths) were not entirely necessary because the deck boards would hold the frame in that direction, but I added them anyway because it's good practice and adding more strength to the frame is never a bad idea.

These are what I used to join the frame; Some 75mm galvanised screws, galvanised joist hangers and some galvanised clouts.

I started by joining the corners together using the 75mm screws. These doubled as a means to join the corners, but also get everything lined up for the hangers.

Before adding the hangers I made sure the frame was square. This is done by measuring the 2 diagonals and if they're the same length then you know it's all square.

Next I added the hangers. The hangers were made for 90mm timber and all the nail holes were filled with nails.

I painted the top side of the frame. This helps with any moisture coming through between the deck boards, but more importantly hides the frame so you can't see it between the boards. That's why it's a dark paint, the idea is for it to blend into the shadows.

The area that the frame was sitting on needed some work in order for the frame to sit flush. I cut the concrete out using a diamond blade on an angle grinder.

To keep the timber off the concrete I used plastic window packers. Where ever possible you should never have wood on concrete; without a gap the wood will absorb any moisture in the concrete, and eventually the wood will rot.

Using the different sized packers I could lift the frame in different areas to ensure it was at the correct level in both directions and not in contact with the ground.

Using a straight edge and a level I could ensure the entire frame was coplanar and flat.

To make sure the frame didn't move I installed some L brackets (galvanised of course). That black blob is some silicone sealant to hold the packers in place while I shift the frame around.

I used 2 screws into the wood and 1 expanding bolt into the concrete. Here in Australia they call them "Dynabolts".

The front face of the deck would sit just below the concrete so I needed to dig the dirt out from the edge.

I cut the front face boards at 45 degrees for the mitred corner.

You can see the front face boards are 19mm higher than the frame. This is the thickness of the decking boards. I used a scrap piece of the decking to get the right height.

The face boards were screwed into the frame from the back so there were no fastners showing.

Then I could starting cutting the treated pine decking to length.

Using a mitre saw helped to speed this process up.

To find out how much I needed to cut off the last board I laid them all out on the deck first. This allowed me to customise the gap between the boards to I didn't end up with a small gap at the end. If the last board is very thin it becomes difficult to attach and is more noticeable when looking at the deck as a whole. Instead, making a 0.5mm change in the spacing would drastically change the outcome of that last board.

Doing this on a large deck would take far too long, but because this is a small deck I could take my time on it.

In the end it worked out that a 1.5mm spacer was best. I used these tile spacers.

Then I could start nailing all the boards into the frame. If I was to do this again I would use screws. For this application I don't believe there is any benefit in hand nailing. If you had a nail gun then it would be a lot quicker, but I'll choose stainless steel screws next time. They look great and hold the timber down better than nails.

All that was left was the stain...

And it was done!