Cedar

A few years ago my wife and I rebuilt the deck attached to our house. We removed the old deck of aging redwood and designed the new deck to be larger and styled differently. I sawed excellent red cedar logs a year earlier in preparation for this building project. The sawed material air-dried for one year. Then I hired a millwright shop to surface the boards to dimension, straighten the edges, and round-over the corners. My wife and I worked together to erect and assembled the deck in around eighty hours. Each board is attached to the joist with screws from underneath. The stair treads are also made of cedar. The rails are cedar with 3/4" copper tubing as pickets. We used type-K copper tubing which is thicker and more rigid than types L and M. Red cedar is a desirable wood for this purpose because it doesn't split, warp, or twist with age. The red in the cedar is resistant to decay and insects. The coloration of the cedar is now gray after three years of elements, but the original color can be restored by pressure washing.

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