Home – A New Deck

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The old deck. The original decking is on the left of this pic with more decking added a few years later. You can see the line down the centre where the old met the new, I hated that. The decking planks had long since lost their rustic look and I stained them grey to make them look a bit more presentable. Everywhere you see a plant pot in this image I found rot on the top planks and sub frame joists!

I’ve reached a crossroads with my blog. Originally I decided to keep my articles closely tied to my photography but I’ve found myself wanting to make it a more personal, almost journal like, place for me to record parts of our life as it chunters on. So here’s the story of a home renovation project.

My photography has taken a little bit of a backseat recently as I’ve been busy renovating my late mothers old flat, making it ready to sell as soon as probate for mums estate is sorted. At the same time I also decided to renew our wooden garden deck, starting that project back in February. That renovation is a few years overdue and I wanted to take advantage of a good price for the wooden decking planks.

The old original decking joists which are nearly 15 yrs old. They were all pretty sound and fine to re-use with the addition of the joist tape, shown here.

We had our original deck built for us in 2012. The landscaper had used quality timber and made a really good job of it. We had a patio to the side of that original deck but never used it. So, a few years later we decided to add another section of decking, adjoining the original deck. That was good decision and we make good use of the large decking area we ended up with.

Over time the top deck timbers have deteriorated, despite being regularly treated, and the sub frame on the new section of deck has also been susceptible to rot. Experience has taught me that keeping plants on the deck, which need regular watering, is not a good mix. Everywhere we had plant pots I found sub frame wood rot problems.

I had to renew the entire front section of this section of decking. I used these decking pads to support the joists on top of the old patio slabs. They’re adjustable up and down and made getting my levels really easy. There’s a very slight slope on the timbers towards the edge of this image so that rain water runs off the deck.

Building material prices, especially timber, here in the UK, have increased considerably over recent years and our deck is big at 28m sq. However, I found a good deal on quality timber from Travis Perkins with a 4.8m x 124mm plank coming in at £12.50. I used 50 planks.

Getting the old deck planks out was probably the toughest part of the whole project. The decking screws had been in a long time and lots of them sheared off as I tried to unscrew them. The screwheads were also just worn away and I couldn’t grip a lot of them. In the end I got some screws out but otherwise I just used brute force with a jemmy. It took me three full days to get all the planks up and then cut them down so I could get them in the car for transport to the local refuse tip.

The new deck planks in place and ready to be screwed in. I’d watched a few UK YouTube ‘how to lay a deck videos’ and spaced the planks at 4mm with the first plank 18mm from our house wall.

With that job out of the way I bought more timber to repair the rotten decking joists I found. Overall it wasn’t too bad but bizarrely the newer section of the deck was the worse. I put that down to air flow around the joists and the fact we had plant pots on the deck keeping those areas damp.

I applied joist tape to all the subframe timber and used plastic decking pads to support the frame that sits on top of the old patio. I bought them off a builder on Facebook Marketplace. I had to buy a job lot of 114 but he let me have them for £100. I only used 35 of them but that was still a big saving over what I would have paid for new, equivalent quality pads if I bought them new. I’ll try and sell on what I have left.

My neighbour loaned me a professional spec Maketa chop saw which made cutting the deck timbers to size really easy. I went through well over a thousand decking screws securing the planks to the subframe!

I was able to save the balustrade with some black garden paint. I did replace to top handrails but replacing it all would have been a big expense. The finished balustrade turned out far better than I thought it would.

With the deck planks secured the final job was to treat it with decking oil. I did that this week as we’ve had fine weather here in the UK. I used a product called Rye Oil which was a reasonable £55 for a massive tub. I’d priced up using Ronseal Decking Protector and it would have cost me £250! The oil went down really well and three coats seemed to reach the wood saturation point.

My specially adapted decking brush. It worked a treat.
The finished, oiled deck.

Hopefully the new deck should see us through for a few more years now. I have worked hard but it was a nice project to complete and very rewarding. I’m really pleased with the finished deck. It’s very sturdy underfoot and the rain seems to be running off it with no pooling. It’s a big improvement over what was there before.

I think overall I completed the project for just under £1000, a lot cheaper than getting someone in to do it. We just need a nice hot UK summer to take full advantage of it now although we did have our dinner out on it today 🙂

All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.

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