Create a new and elegant deck across the back of the house to restore this lakeside residence back into a place to relax, to take in the sunshine, to entertain friends and family on the deck and by a crackling barbecue and fire pit.
In this case, a balustrade is not critical as the height of the deck from the patio is only 450mm, so well below the 600mm limit, plus this is an ideal height to sit for those impromptu summer barbecues. The owner is a keen canoeist, and so we also came up with a way to slide the boats under the lefthand side of the deck by setting the supporting beams at an angle to ensure we could get the boats down low enough to just fit under the deck structure above. They also had a pile of stone walling units, ideal to create a simple fire pit and barbecue. The righthand side of the deck was in reasonable condition in terms of the sub-structure, so to save the client some money we decided to simply reclad this section, but did take the opportunity to use a polythene membrane to protect the old structure from further water ingress.
This was quite a simple project, the work was really in determining the best structure to support the deck adequately while maintaining enough clearance below the deck to allow for the boats. This took a couple of iterations as often the best ideas are not the first. A bit of elapsed time; a little reflection allows the brain the space to provide those flashes of inspiration, often when you are doing something else completely.
A vast improvement.
