Ground Up Second Story Deck in Carlsbad

The back of this house sits a full story above the patio. The deck had to carry that height, hold a stair run down to the concrete, and leave the covered space underneath worth standing in.

It started at the footings. New footings went in on the patio with galvanized bases set into them, and the posts were stood up off those. Beams and joists were framed off the posts, and the underside was sheathed and painted so the patio below reads as a finished ceiling instead of the bottom of a deck.

The stair stringers are redwood, cut and hung off the deck frame and painted to match the house. A run this long is where a deck gets found out. Every tread has to land at the same rise and the bottom one has to meet the concrete cleanly, so the stringers get laid out off the finished deck height and not off the framing.

Trex went down over the frame, cut with a track saw so every board keeps a clean edge and the gaps stay consistent. The same boards run out to the treads and risers on the stairs. Trex aluminum railing went on last, along the deck and down the full length of the run, with the posts landing through the decking into the frame.

Composite does not take a stain, so nothing gets corrected later. Any layout error stays visible for the life of the deck. The boards run one direction across the whole field and the border was held tight, so the ends land square at both walls.