Our Dream Deck is Finished!

We completely tore down our deck to build our dream deck. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of this deck build, and why we decided to do it!

The biggest reason we decided to tear it all down and rebuild was that we didn’t have stairs that went down to the backyard. It was so infuriating that you had to go into the house and go down the stairs to get to the lower portion of our yard, or you had to go on the side and go all the way around the retaining walls. It just was not functional.

The other thing we hated about our screened-in porch was that it was built using a 2×4 every single foot, and they were all unevenly spaced. It just looked so bad! Did I still love my screened porch? Absolutely! Because if you’ve never had a screened porch, you don’t know how much you will love it until you have one. Now, I can never live in a house without one.

So fast forward, I got connected with DeckSouth through MoistureShield, and we were like, let’s freaking do this, make the coolest deck, upgrade it, all the things. So DeckSouth came out, and they looked at everything. There were a couple of things that we had to change from the original design from a cost perspective. We could’ve had less pillars on the bottom, but we decided to forgo a $10,000 beam to have that space open, which is totally fine with me! I feel like it looks really good no matter what.

They tore it down in literally like a day and a half, maybe two days, and they started to rebuild the frame from scratch. All of the wood framing was from ProWood, and Miguel and Chris knocked it out so fast. I was so, so impressed.

I would say all in all the framing took about five days because they had to do all of the stairs and then do all of the G-Tape. If you are going to build your own deck or outdoor structure with wood, the G-Tape helps preserve the wood and keep it more waterproof. And I think every reputable builder will probably use that, but that’s something that I learned that I didn’t know about!

Choosing the Decking

When I say the decking was the easiest decision I made on this entire deck, I truly mean it. I literally looked at the color and I was like that’s the one I want.

MoistureShield decking in progress for screened porch

We went with MoistureShield Meridian in Catalina. They have a couple tiers of lines that you can choose from. We chose the middle tier just because it fit our needs best!

The Meridian Catalina looks like real wood. It’s got like those actually defined wood grain-like grooves, and I love that it’s like a taupey-gray. It’s not too dark. That was my main concern because this outside portion gets blasted with sun and I wanted to make sure that the color was gonna last, and that it wouldn’t be too hot on your feet.

That’s another reason why we went with MoistureShield— because they have the CoolDeck technology, which makes it 35% less hot than other brands. Unfortunately, you know everybody’s like, “Oh, get Trex”, but if you know anybody that has one, they will tell you it is so hot so that’s why we went with MoistureShield.

We’ve been living with it for an entire year and I absolutely love it. They don’t scratch easily. They’re just absolutely beautiful.

And we had to compliment them and kick the design up a notch by adding PVC to not only make it look better, but also protect the integrity of all of the wood. We have every single column wrapped in PVC.

Underneath the Deck

I hated the ceiling of my last deck because there was none. When I redid that space the first time I had taken the carpet up, and I didn’t realize the carpet was there to keep the bugs out, so we had to put screens under it, which was a huge pain but essential to keeping the bugs out. Everything that fell from the top of the deck down, you could see it on the ceiling down there. So dog hair, kids’ stuff, leaves, anything… it was there, and it was gross!

We went with Southeast Under Decking to do the under decking for the entire bottom portion of our deck. Most of it is covered, but the outdoor deck portion was not. Now it’s a water-tight system, so we can use that entire area, including underneath the outdoor kitchen, for storage or for the kids to play. One day, I want to make it a cool hideaway for them, and the best part is that it will be dry so they can play with it all year round!

We went with the color linen for the under decking. The decision on that was so hard! I had to wait until the brick was painted muddled basil before I could pick, but I love it!

Anyway we ended up adding some really great tech. We added 12 lights. We did two speakers (connected to a sonos amp). We did five fans and they are all controlled with Southeast Under Decking App and it’s worked amazingly! I have not had one problem with it in the year that we have had it and it’s insane, but it makes that space look so high-end and just makes it so much more functional than it ever was before. We even added a bedswing and our favorite heaters. Basically, every detail of this deck was thought out meticulously, and it couldn’t have turned out better.

Railings

I really, really like the railings from RDI Rail. They give a really high-end, clean look. My goal was to not draw attention to the railings and kind of just have them blended in, which is why we didn’t go with white. Even though we had white railings before, and our house is white, it just seemed like too much.

The black railing kind of plays off of the fence that we have by our pond that we also got from lld castle. I really like the top of them because they’re rounded, so they just look clean and very cute. They’re super stable.

DeckSouth even made matching gates at the top of each set of stairs so that when we do have smaller kids, we can lock them up here and still enjoy the outdoor kitchen without stress of someone falling down our new stairs. The gates are a really cool custom feature that DeckSouth does too. They gave everything like a really seamless, amazing, clean look.

Screened Porch

The screened porch is my pride and freaking joy. We went with Freedom Screens. They’re so awesome because they’re so sleek. The screens have an aluminum casing that goes around them and you stick the screens inside the casing, therefore they are not going to get ruined by the wind. They’re not gonna become loose. They are so great and we have these big wide panels on the porch where we can actually see our backyard and see our pond and this beautiful view now which is freaking amazing.

I chose black to match the railings and make it all disappear more rather than stand out, and I just really love the look.

Freedom Screens on screened porch on upper deck

The Outdoor Kitchen

Oh my gosh, the amount of time that I spent on the Gemini kitchen software from Pro-Fit Outdoor Living just moving things around and adjusting measurements and seeing what appliances we could fit. It took me so long to really nail down exactly what I wanted but honestly, I think we nailed it. We got all appliances from bbq guys!!! We use every appliance almost every time we cook out here.

Read all about our Outdoor Kitchen here

We went with the Cosentino countertops because they will last a lifetime and that’s the goal for a kitchen like this. It’s a set-and-forget-it, and you can’t do a lot to change it unless you want to forklift everything, so it needed to be timeless and beautiful and just organic to the space. I feel like we nailed it, especially with the wood pergola. Originally, in the first plan, we were planning to paint the pergola, and it just looked too modern to me. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful, but it was too modern for out here in our space.

It is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful kitchen, and even with the mistake of the stain color (SW WoodScapes Hawthorne), I’m obsessed with it. It is a very large kitchen. Did it need to be this big? Maybe not, but this is how we designed it, and I wouldn’t have changed anything – except maybe making the pergola go over the island just so it’s not as hot in the summer, and if it rains, we can still use it. Maybe that’s a project for another day, but that’s the one thing that I would’ve changed.

DeckSouth was amazing. They knocked this out super fast! It took them like two hours just to put the base together. The bulk of the work was the stone, and I mean, Miguel had this pergola up in two days.

We used Cover Your Pergola so that we could protect the appliances, and just keep us from getting wet when we’re cooking out here if it is raining. I just love how it all came together. I ended up getting the stools from Amazon.

Another thing that was really great that we added was this extra bar on the side. We had the space for it, and we also had the extra slab, which was incredible. It was meant to be.

Lighting

For lighting, we went with in-lite. You can’t skimp on that! For the outdoor kitchen, underneath the island, we did the in-lite lights as well and they’re all on on a timer and it gives that night glow that’s like a really high-end resort. I just love it! Like, I still can’t believe this is my house. I still can’t believe we did this project. But shout out to DeckSouth, Oldcastle APG, RDI Rail, MoistureShield, ProWood, Cosentino, BBQ guys, in-lite, and Southeast Under Decking for making this all happen.

One thing I want to add about DeckSouth is that I have never seen a contractor team like this before! I’m telling you, when they said they were gonna be there at 8 AM, they were there at 8 AM every single day. They stayed until seven, and they worked their butts off. They were so dependable. They were so reliable.

The communication was great, and they literally had every kind of trade that we would’ve needed to do this entire deck. It was so nice to not have to juggle multiple contractors!

I can’t recommend the DeckSouth team enough, it was truly, truly a gift to work with them. Professionalism top tier! I’ll let you know how everything holds up (mainly the kitchen cleaning in the springtime when all the pollen comes).

Until then, let’s just really enjoy this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful deck!