When we purchased our house, it was a new build spec house that was almost complete so we weren’t able to pick out the majority of the finishes. The house came with the “standard” deck taking up only half the rooftop. The builder’s price to upgrade it to the full size deck was $6400. We bought the house not really planning on expanding the deck and just kinda left it as is.
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Deciding to Extend
Fast forward to summer 2019, at a neighborhood block party, one of our neighbors mentioned they were getting their standard deck built out by another neighbor who actually works in construction. The price quoted was $5000. Next thing we knew, we were handing over a deposit for the job to be completed for OUR deck, getting HOA approval, and scheduling the extension project to take place in the following 2 weeks! Impulse purchase much?
By the way, you may notice that the existing deck was half stained… When we stained the deck and railings, we ended up running out of stain, got super busy with life and never got around to finishing. Sounds silly but we just kinda forgot about it? You can tell that we really never went up to the roof or spent much time up there.
The Finished Deck!
Roof Vent Pipe
Our neighbor returned a few days later to shorten the pvc pipe for us. It was super simple – just sawed the top part off and popped on this vent pipe filter from Amazon. It’s way less of an eye sore now and made a huge difference to the space!
The whole project took 3 days total:
- Day 1 – center railing taken down in preparation for crane lifting wood
- Day 2 – deck build out and extra outlet installed
- Day 3 – finishing last couple rail spindles and clean up
Total Cost: $5350
- $5000 – building deck
- $200 – crane fee
- $150 – extra outlet
Before the deck extension, we did have some outdoor furniture up on the deck but never went up to enjoy the space because it was just so crammed and uninviting.
After going through with the extension, we now frequently enjoy the rooftop sipping coffee in the early mornings and watching the sunset in the evenings.
In The Works…
Coming up, we’ll be preparing for next Spring to fully decorate and maximize our new deck! Current plans are to furnish the rest of the deck with entertaining in mind, finding outdoor storage solutions, and coming up with a lighting plan.
Most importantly, we have to plan out what color to stain (most likely going with a different color than initially chosen). We’re not supposed to stain fresh wood for at least 6 months so for the time being, we will have to live with multi-colored wood!
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