Our plans to create a cozy covered deck space
Okay, so the timing of this post might seem a bit odd – especially because there are little tiny snowflakes falling to the ground as I type this, but I’ve had so many questions about our covered deck plans that I figured it was about time I shared what the heck we’ve been up to in our backyard this Summer.
If you hadn’t already heard through my Instagram stories or random mentions through my Weekend Reading updates, you’ve likely guessed it from the title of this post – we’re building a covered deck. So why the 7 foot trench running across most of our backyard? Good question! The answer is a bit of a long story really, but the gist is that Brady plans to build a second garage out back here and wanted to run the utilities from the house to garage site before we covered them all with a deck.
And so, before we could even start construction on this deck, we had a whole lot of prep work to get everything ready. In addition to running the gas, electrical and plumbing to our future garage site (which took weeks in and of itself), we also ran a gas line to the new deck space so we could hook up a BBQ as well as a patio heater or gas fire table.
Of course, we also had to demolish and haul away most of our existing concrete patio to allow access for the support piles that needed to be drilled underneath. Oh my gosh, was that a ton of work!
Finally, we utilized the help of a structural engineer to design the actual build plans for our covered deck. Brady being an engineer himself (though not structural sadly), he’s always a stickler for doing things the right way – because the structure of our covered deck is going to be tied into the structure of our house, it’s really important that the design is planned and stamped by a structural engineer so that we don’t compromise the integrity of either structure. The back and forth of all this planning was a lengthy process and took much longer than either of us had expected. In fact, it took so long that we’ve officially run out of Summer, making most of this a project for next year now instead. Though we’re definitely disappointed that we won’t see this built before Winter hits this year, especially after all that prep work, in the end we decided it was better not to rush our design choices and give ourselves the extra time to plan out every little detail.
For now, we’ve got the structural bits all planned out and we’re going to work on the design details over the Winter here so that we’re ready to go with it all as soon as Spring rolls in next year. And so, I don’t have any pretty design details to share with you today, but I do have the structural plans so that you can at least have a glimpse into what we’ve been up to out there.
Above, you can find a drawing of the dimensions of our deck and its placement along the back of our house. That open doorway at the bottom of the drawing is the back door of our house, entering into our mudroom. There are no interior walls on this drawing, but just to give you an idea – to the right is a sliding glass door from our back living room and to the left is our powder room and kitchen. Measuring 26′ long by almost 16′ deep, this is going to be a nice big outdoor space for us to create both a dining area and lounge area. I have to say, I’m probably most excited to not have to worry about having to tuck all of our cushions and decor away to keep it dry and protected from the elements thanks to the roof we’re planning to build over it all.
Though there’s no way we’re going to finish this project before Winter rolls in, we did manage to get most of the prep work done on the ground at least. Not only did we get the utilities run from our house to the new garage site before we covered it all up, but we did all of the demo and groundwork for the base. We had 10 structural supports drilled into the ground that have been engineered to support everything and we’ve even managed to get the base of the actual deck built out. Sure, it’s far from done, but considering we’ve been finishing our basement through all of this too (read more about that here), I’m pretty proud of the progress we did make.
We’ve still got a few more weeks of Fall left here, so here’s hoping we can at least get the deck boards on before Winter rolls in (you can follow along with our progress on Instagram). After a whole Winter dreaming up all the design details (find some of my inspiration here), I’m sure we’ll be ready to turn this space into the covered deck of our dreams come next Spring!
Do you have a covered deck space? If so, I’d love to hear any ideas, things that you love and hate about the space, or any other things we should think about while we work out the design details over these next few months.
Wishing you SUCH a lovely day my friends!
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I can't wait to hear your thoughts!