This past October we decided to co-host a Halloween party with some of our closest friends. It just so happened that the venue chosen was at my Girlfriend’s rental house. You may be asking how we managed to secure that venue if it is a rental. Well luckily for us the tenants are a diverse mix of family and friends who happened to be just as excited about the party as we were. The house is large (approx. 1800 sqft) yet with all of the rooms off limits during the party, we would have very little room to entertain. Since it has been on the agenda for a few years now, we decided to solve this problem by building an outdoor deck!

We choose a floating deck so that we did not have to deal with the mess of digging deep post holes and mixing concrete. To do this, we used Dek-Blocks® whose manufacture happens to provide Home Depot with free instructions for customers to use. Personally, I directly used the Dek-Block® website to obtain a list of materials I would need to build the deck, which we decided would be 16 x 12 footer, as well as full instructions on how. I had never done anything like this before so naturally I was a bit nervous.

I followed every single detail laid out in the instructions; however, I did manage to run into a few problems, the largest of which was that the deck was over 9 inches higher than the bottom of our back door. This would clearly not work so to fix this I built the main deck 4 feet away from the house and a smaller secondary 6 x 4 foot deck (no higher than the bottom of the back door) leading out to it. This smaller deck was not built on Dek-Blocks® causing me to have to drive posts into the ground for stability. To do this I used several 2 inch by 2 inch posts, driving them into the ground with a rubber mallet, and screwing them into the frame. It wasn’t difficult at all, just time consuming. From the back door, visitors could smoothly transition onto the smaller deck without any issues yet now they had to take a step up onto the large deck; however, it is no higher than a normal step is and actually adds some nice detail to the project.

If we were to higher a contractor to do this job for us it would have cost us $1300 easily; however, using my weekend off, an accurate list of materials, and some ingenuity, I managed to build both of these decks for slightly under $500! It was a difficult task, no doubt, and had my employeer not been up for sale, money tight, and our nation in a recession, I would have gladly enertained the idea to have a contractor do this for me. Yet now that I realize how much we saved, I certainly would rather do this myself going forward!

Do It Yourself Projects are great! Not only do you save money but you also add to your skill set, build character, and create a sense of self-accomplishment. If you have a family, having your children help you can also build bonds that will last a lifetime. No matter how small or large your project, with a little bit of research, personal time, and determination, DIY projects can greatly add value to your life.

Here are some pictures of our deck by the way. Since then we have stained it and it looks just like a cedar deck! No pics off the final stain yet but I will post somce once I get them.