We knew when we first bought the house in 2002 that we would want to improve the deck.  At the time, our biggest concern was that it didn't have access to the yard.  We spend a lot of time in the yard, and it seemed logical to connect the indoor areas to the outdoor areas via a deck.

Our original plan was to just tack on a stairway and landing to the front of the existing deck.  But as time went on, this seemed like a bad idea:  The deck was already about 25 years old, and although fairly structurally sound, it looked pretty bad cosmetically.  Also, although our old deck was considerably bigger than the one we had in our old house, it became quickly evident that as long as we were going to do a deck project, it would be nice to have more deck space.  

Finally in 2005, the deck bubbled to the top of our project list.  We considered a number of different designs, came up with one that worked well with our existing yard, and submitted plans to the city for a building permit.   This section documents the progress here, with pictures and narrative to take you through the "project that ate Summer 2005"!

We divided the pictures into two pages for faster loading times.  Click Here to start.