600 Square Foot Covered Deck in Rancho San Diego

The back of this Rancho San Diego house was open paver patio. The paving ran from the sliding doors out to the turf lawn, with only the eave of the house over any of it. Nothing out there was built to carry a roof.

An existing paver patio is not a foundation. A cover this size lands its weight on a small number of points, and every one of those points has to reach solid ground. At one column, the paving was cut open in a square and the hole dug out below it. A rebar cage dropped in, and the anchor hardware was braced over the hole so it would not shift when the concrete came. The pour comes up level with the paving, with dowels left standing above it. The piers are CMU block laid up over the footings and capped flat, with a post base set into the cap.

Along the house, the stucco was cut back to bare framing and a ledger run across the open wall. That ledger carries one edge of the roof. The other edge lands on the beam spanning the piers. Joists run between the two at even spacing, and sheathing gets nailed off over them to lock the frame together.

The doors and windows on the back wall came out and new units took their place. An opening gets squared to the new frame before the unit is set, and the stucco is patched tight to it after. The columns are wrapped, stone at the base and smooth stucco above. The ceiling under the cover is closed in flat. Recessed cans are set into it.

The post base at the bottom of the column is stainless. That is the wettest spot on the whole assembly, and once the wrap goes on it is behind stone and stucco. Galvanized hardware holds up until the coating wears through. Getting at it after that means opening the column back up. Stainless costs more at the supply house. That is the whole argument for using it somewhere you are about to bury.