A New View

Hi, it's me. I'm crawling out from under a pile of wood to bring you a renovation update. Over the past few weeks, the narrow 40" x 40' balcony that flanked the back of the house has been dismantled, piers dug out, and a new structure, both functional and beautiful has been constructed in it's place. Here's the story of our deck...

This is the before picture, taken a few days after we moved in. With a sweeping southern view of Petaluma's Cherry Valley and the Sonoma hills, the deck was barely deep enough to fit a chair without touching your feet to the railing.  A narrow staircase cut across the back side of the house, blocking a lower bedroom window, and an overgrown patch of ivy was tightly knit into the ground below. That was reason enough to rethink the deck, but then there was the problem of the side yard stairs, and the drainage system that we lovingly refer to as "The Roman Aqueduct".  The stairs lead from our front yard gate down into the backyard, and give access to the crawl space on the side of the house. They are slopped and the treads are very short, making them dangerous and a total eyesore.  

When I first started to work on a design for the deck I was stumped on how to make it bigger without losing a ton of yard space to a new stair case off the front, cutting off the same bedroom, only worse, and the conundrum of making the current side stairs more functional, and covering up the ancient drainage that would cost a million dollars and a lot of jack hammering to redo. Then I stumbled upon this picture...

Bingo. Instead of making two sets of stairs, we could deck over the top of the existing side stairs and enclose the area under the side deck with horizontal fencing to create extra storage and access to the crawl space and bedroom fire door.  With this design we would gain more direct access from the front yard to the back, leading straight to our kitchen, and we'd gain an extra westward facing perch to watch the sunset from, not to mention the wide, hangout staircase that does not block that bedroom. We could now use this part of our yard for a massive raised vegetable garden and the under deck shade structure for lounging and eating on hot or windy days. And so it began...

Keeping it in the family, we hired Adam's brother Ben of Jennings McCann Construction. On the crew is my other brother-in-law Brian, Adam, who had a few weeks left of summer vacation and a jr. crew member in Jasper, who helped mix concrete and carry wood. In one day the deck was completely dismantled. Within the week we had the deck structure.

And here we are two weeks in. Over the next few days the fascia boards and cable railing system will be installed, and then we're having the house painted, at which point we'll have to start eating ramen for dinner every night until we begin the interior remodel. Stay tuned for the big outdoor reveal soon!