Second hand deck project

[Laenini]

My husband and I stumbled upon a used deck for sale on the side of the road over Memorial Day weekend. We ended up buying it and have now installed it along side of our pool to make a great pool deck! I thought I would share pictures for anyone interested.

Our pool and yard before the new deck:

Used deck as it looked when it was delivered to our backyard:

We hired the former deck owner to modify and install the deck along the pool. Here are a few views from halfway through the project:

Finished deck (at least finished construction on the deck!)

This shot shows the area we plan to fill in now with flagstone:

The full project isn't done yet of course. Our "to-do" list includes:

• trench in gas line and electric line (scheduled for 06/01)
  strip and stain deck
  install flagstone patio between house deck and pool deck
  landscape around pool

It feels like its coming together though. Now if we could just get some nice swimming weather...

 

[kilika2003]

Hey that's cool....I was wondering how that was going to work out.
Are you using part of your original ladder? or is it designed to work either way?

 

[DaveNJ]

Very nice job. If you have small children a gate at the bottom of stairs would be worth it. Here by code it would have to have a gate at a specific height and self closing, latching.

 

[Poolidiot]

gate

This should be the first (and ASAP) "to do" list item!!

 

[Laenini]

The ladder you see in the pool is part of our old ladder. My husband kinda rigged it up to give us pool access until our new steps arrive. We ordered these steps:
http://www.aquasuperstore.com/products/ ... ~3624.html
and they are scheduled to arrive tomorrow between 10 am and 1 pm. I'm pretty excited that they are coming! We also ordered a skamper ramp
http://www.skamper-ramp.com/home.asp?pid=1
We have 2 small dogs and 4 cats (yes, I know I am crazy!) and I want to be sure they can get out of the pool should they fall in.

Regarding the gate at the bottom of the pool steps. We have a 6 foot cedar fence around our whole backyard. The gates on the fence are self closing, and the latches are at the very top of the gates so that a small child can not reach them. Our fence and gates meet the pool code in our city, and so a gate at the end of the pool steps is not required for us. Since our youngest child is 11 years old we aren't worried about him either. The pool is only 48 inches deep and it just goes up to his mid-chest area. The fence will protect smaller children in the neighborhood from wandering in, and if a small child comes to visit we will be sure to supervise and protect the child. Now our oldest daughter is getting married later this summer, and once we start having grandchildren we might feel very differently about putting a gate at the bottom of the steps. For now though I think we are pretty comfortable leaving it open.

 

[Pleakpool]

That looks great! Glad to see I'm not the only one that uses second hand decks. I bought a 16' x 16' deck and a 15' x 18' deck off Craigslist for a combined $300. I've disassembled them and now am getting ready to start on my deck. 2" x 6" deck boards are usually still pretty good - clean them, turn them over and stain them.

 

[Laenini]

That looks great! Glad to see I'm not the only one that uses second hand decks. I bought a 16' x 16' deck and a 15' x 18' deck off Craigslist for a combined $300. I've disassembled them and now am getting ready to start on my deck. 2" x 6" deck boards are usually still pretty good - clean them, turn them over and stain them.

Wow, that was a great deal! I have got to start paying more attention to Craig's list! :-D I can't wait to see your finished deck, be sure to post pics for us?

 

[Cassiopeia]

Wow I didn't know you could find "used" decks! How cool is that!

It looks great!

 

[Guest]

I didn't know that you could move a deck like that -- what did that cost to move and how'd they do it?

Looks really nice!

Sue

 

[NJpoolguy]

I didn't know that you could move a deck like that -- what did that cost to move and how'd they do it?

Looks really nice!

Sue

Anything can be moved. I am guessing they used a flat bed tow truck with a winch?? or four or five people could have just lifted it on to a large trailer.

 

[Laenini]

We bought the deck from 2 guys who own a mobile home repair company. They seem to be kind of jack-of-all-trades kind of guys and we ended up hiring them for the gas and electric line trenching that we needed done too. Anyway, the deck is 12.5' by 10.5' and they towed it over to our house (it was only a 6 mile trip over backroads) on a trailer, pulling it with just a big pick-up truck. Once they got to my house with it they did an amazing job of backing that trailer into my backyard. I wish I would have grabbed the video camera and filmed them doing it, I was so impressed! We had to take down a section of our fence to make room for the deck to go through, and it just barely squeeked by. Once the trailer was in the backyard they took out several jacks just like what you might jack a car up with and jacked the deck up off of the trailer, then just pulled the trailer and truck away.

The used deck was only 4 years old, and while it did end up cheaper than building it new would have been, it really wasn't a huge bargain. We paid $1300 for the deck, $300 to get it moved to our house, then another $1200 to get it installed (new underbelly built, stairs built, open side modified to fit around the pool). So $2800 total. I think just the lumber would have been almost that much if we would have tried to build a similar deck from scratch (the lumber I know for the deck on our house was $2300 and that was 6 years ago). Plus, we didn't have to do any work ourselves. These guys did a nice, professional looking job too.

Now my big challenge is going to be stripping and staining the deck so that the new parts blend with the old parts. Anyone have any advice for me on how to best do that?