This deck had been condemned by its own owner. The piers under the posts
had sunk far enough that the deck was carrying its weight on the stair
stringers instead — and the stringers were cracking under it. The
homeowner stopped using the deck entirely.
The budget said reuse what you can, so that is what we did. We poured a
new pier under the main structural area where the sagging originated,
salvaged the posts and piers that were sound and had finished settling,
and rebuilt the frame with new blocking. The decking went back down in
composite, which should keep this deck out of trouble for decades.
The hard part was the stairs. We landed the new stringers across two
piers — the old one we reused and the new one we poured — and they sat at
different heights. You cannot just cut two matching stringers for that.
Each one was laid out to its own length while keeping every rise and run
identical across both, so the treads come out level and the steps feel
the same underfoot. Add odd post angles and the math for reusing the old
concrete, and it was a week of getting a lot of small numbers right.
I am proud of this crew. Several of them took on the concrete work for
the first time on this job and did it well. Getting the deck level, the
posts plumb and those stringers true was genuinely difficult, and they
stayed on schedule doing it. The homeowners stained it once the treated
lumber had dried out and tell me it looks better than they expected.
Before
The Work
Finished
