Custom Deck and Pavilion in Rancho Bernardo

What stood here before was an open arbor. Rough round posts held up a top of open slats, which breaks the sun up without stopping it and does nothing at all in the rain. There was no floor and there were no walls. Under it was bare ground, with a bench and a pair of cushioned chairs on it.

We pulled the arbor out and opened the ground up for the piers. String lines came first, the holes were dug to them, and a cardboard form tube dropped into each one. Bags of mix and a barrow of wet concrete sat next to the holes while the forms were placed. The rest of the job goes on top of those piers, so they get poured and checked before a board lands on them.

We set the girders on steel post bases over a weed barrier and checked them level before anything landed on top. Those bases hold the wood up off the concrete so water cannot sit against end grain, which is where posts and beams give out first. Joists ran across the girders, then the deck boards. The pavilion posts do not stop at the deck. They run past it, down to footings of their own in the ground below. Each post took a steel cap at the top, and the roof beams were seated on those caps with a lift.

The roof is rafters over the perimeter beams, each one tied down with a metal connector and blocked solid where it crosses. Sheathing was nailed off on top, then a deep overhang on all four sides. That overhang is what keeps sun and rain off the walls and the boards under them. Inside, the ceiling is tongue and groove board, and the back wall is the same board run horizontally and closed solid. One side wall is a horizontal louvered screen. Louvers do what a solid wall cannot: break up a sightline and still let air through. The ceiling carries recessed downlights and a box for a center fixture, and there are outlets in the wall boards. On a build like this you set every box and pull every wire before the boards close it in, because after that you are cutting into finished work.

Three wide tiers wrap the front and one side, and every tread lands on a cut stringer set tight to the next one. Composite treads flex over a span solid lumber would carry. A stair built with them takes more stringers than a wood one, and the spacing has to be settled before the first tread is fastened. At the outside corner the treads and risers are mitered, so the lines carry around instead of dying into a butt joint. The riser lights stack in line from step to step, which also gets laid out first. All of it sits on the concrete landing, formed and tied with rebar before it was poured, so the bottom step never lands on dirt.