the great decking project

The project to replace the decking is progressing.  It's a pity that decking now has such a bad image: so last decade, TV makeover, probably only still being installed in bastions of bad taste like Essex...If you want to provide level hard-landscaped areas to give somewhere to put a table and chairs and some pots, and divide up the garden internally, and you are dealing with a sloping site in an area of the country with no natural building stone, on a limited budget, decking is rather what you end up with.  Brick retaining walls and properly laid paving would cost a multiple of my annual income.  The only time we had a brick wall built in the back garden, when we had the conservatory installed many years ago, the builders hit quicksand digging the foundations.  Better not go there again.

I had fancied the idea of industrial metal grating, probably after one or two visits too many to the Chelsea Flower Show.  There turned out to be several problems with this idea.  Industrial grating is expensive.  It comes in set sizes which are not multiples of the dimensions of the existing decks, so there would be an awful lot of cutting with an angle grinder, and a lot of waste.

Instead we hit on western red cedar.  This has good technical properties, the most important being that it is naturally rot resistant outdoors and doesn't require wood treatment.  This will spare me many tedious hours with a paintbrush, and avoid that sinking feeling as the stain dries to a colour that is much more orange than it looked on the tin.  If left untreated it fades to an agreeable shade of grey.

The big pile of planks arrived in mid November.  They looked very nice, with bevelled edges, and hadn't been bundled together with steel bands so there were no problems with crushed edges or marked faces.  After some time making jigs to do the job properly the first deck went down, and looked extremely smart.  Then it froze, then it snowed.  It is impossible to lay decking in those conditions because (a) the planks stick together and you can't get them off the pile (b) the planks won't lie flat on the beams because there are ice crystals on all surfaces (c) drilling the frozen planks risks splitting them (d) it is impossible to line up the screws wearing gloves and without gloves you lose the use of your fingers after ten minutes (e) the cordless screwdriver battery won't hold a charge.  A powered screwdriver is necessary because laid end to end there is 1.6km of decking.  It is also tricky laying decking in the rain because (a) you can't see which the best side of the plank is (b) you get wet and then you get a cold or your back goes (c) the power tools get wet and stop working or you get electrocuted.

Nailing decking down is a lot faster, and you are not supposed to do it, because if it warps it will lift the nails straight out of the beams.  This is what happened with the old decking, which was only untreated softwood and had gone badly rotten in places.  Some of the less rotten bits have already been recycled into a new compost bin.  Waste not, want not.