DIY DECK BUILD MAKEOVER (It's finally done!) 16x28 ft Deck

Normally with my DIY videos, I like to give a step-by-step of how we did the whole project. However, with this deck build, it was such a large project, much bigger than our DIY fireplace makeover, and so I was not able to really be there for every single step and see all the things that everyone was doing. So most of this video was shot with my phone. I was on the ground, you know, doing the work myself, so I wasn't able to film as much as I wanted to, but hopefully I can still give you some good pointers when doing this deck. First thing that I'm going to mention, these holes that we dug right here, at first they were wrong. We dug the wrong holes and we needed to fill them and then redo them, and that was because we did not go to the county first to get the specific details of how we could do it to their standards. So with our county, who's very strict when it comes to building, we can't just build something the way that, you know, we know how to do it. We have to abide by the rules from our county. So that's my first tip, is if you are doing a project like this yourself, you have to go to your county and figure out what are the exact measurements and placement of everything that you need to do, just to make sure that you don't fail inspection, because that's another thing. We had three rounds of inspection with this deck. When you are building something like this, you want to make sure that if you don't have a contractor who knows what they're doing, they're used to working with the county, then you're going to have to make sure you're doing things to their standard. So you can see at this point of building the deck, we're getting all of our general framing done, getting all of the supports built in. So we had the holes, we had the footers, and then we also had the ledger board, which is attached to the house. You can see all the different kinds of bolts that we had to attach it to the house. And then we also put the supports in between each beam as well. And so the next part was just installing the posts, and this was kind of the exciting part, because then you just really felt like it was coming together, and you just start, you know. I feel like the whole project, I'm like visualizing me sipping my coffee in the morning out on the deck. Anyways, it was a lot of work, and it was super hot outside, so it was it was a little hard to be dreaming while also building this deck in the middle of summer. We used trex for this deck, and I am so glad that we did use composite instead of wood, just because I love the way this looks against the siding of our house. I love that it's going to be easy to clean and maintain, and I know that, you know, not everyone wants to do trex, and that's totally fine. For us, it was like either trex or no deck, and so I'm really glad that we went with it, because it was easy to install. Normally with composite decks, a lot of people, you screw the trex on top into the wood. However, with you can see, we used hidden fasteners. There was two types that we could do, and we chose this way. But essentially, as you can see, you just tighten these fasteners, and you just lock them together. And what's great about this is that there is space in between the trex boards, so that way if it's hot and the trex deck wants to expand, then it can. Also, just so that way the water's not sitting on the deck, it has enough space to go down into the ground. And the very next thing that we worked on was these stairs. And of course, we did the same thing, holes with the cement, just to kind of explain why I put the stairs where I did. Originally, I wanted them in the middle of the deck, going out to the yard front-facing. However, when I planned out the furniture and design of how I wanted everything to go in the walk path, I decided that putting these stairs close to the sliding glass door, so you can just go from in the house to a few steps, and you can walk down the stairs to the yard. That was actually the best for the deck, so that way I could use the rest of the space for furniture, table, etc. So if you are building, definitely take into consideration how you want your furniture flow to go, and also to make sure you have enough walking room. Especially if you're going to be grilling on the deck, you want to make sure that the person grilling has enough room around them, and if the stairs are near them, that nobody's going to be bombarding them when they have a hot grill that they're working on. So as they finished working on the railings, the next step, and really the last step of this all, was covering the skeleton of the deck. And so for the stairs, we used this white, I think it was PVC board, I'm not sure, I can't remember. But we used that to cover the side of the stairs, and then also individual steps as you go up them to cover that wood. And then for the wraparound of the deck and the siding, we actually used what's called special board, but it's the same composite material. And it didn't cover all of the wood, which disappointed me a little bit, but ultimately I would like to cover the bottom of the deck with something. Not lattice, maybe something a little bit more modern, but that's something I still have yet to figure out what I want to do. Thank you so much for watching this deck build makeover. Please like this video, leave a comment, let me know what you thought, it helps so much. And with that, I will see you on the next makeover.