DIY Backyard Makeover (Complete Deck Transformation)

to say that this deck has seen better days would be a bit of an understatement while ideally i would have ripped out the whole deck and built a new one the cost of lumber is still relatively high and so i opted to just spruce this one up a bit the goal here was just to get a couple more years out of this thing and i think i achieved that this bench was actually really solid i was really impressed by just how rigid it was however it didn't fit into the plan that i had so i had to rip it out and as strong as it was it still was no match for the sawzall anytime that i see lattice used like this i get a little bit sad like was the installer okay anyways this obviously couldn't stay thankfully though it came out with just a slight nudge i think you could look at this stuff the wrong way and it would jump ship and then the railings had to come out too while these were a lot more solid they just didn't fit the style that i wanted i don't have a problem necessarily with the style of railings however it's just not my preference with everything gone the fun could begin i was really blown away by just how effective this was i'm using an 1800 psi pressure washer with a fan tip and it worked really well it took a little bit of trial and error to find the right distance to hold it as to not completely ruin the wood but after i got it it was a really satisfying process and i actually enjoyed doing this it's really nice when you can do something really simple and get great results from it once everything was washed i gave the deck a rinse and then applied a wood cleaner this helped get rid of all the leftover green and grossness and it worked really well i took a brush scrubbed it down and then once it all dried i just gave it a light sanding just to kind of reduce the chance of a sliver and look at this wood guys i mean that is night and day then i applied a stain this is a semi-transparent and it was a lot more orange than i was expecting however it turned into a happy little accident after realizing it it did match the pressure treated lumber quite nicely so it did work out in the end although i was a little sad to cover up that nice wood that we had and here i'm just setting the new post for the rails i put locking around each one to make sure it was nice and solid and i actually sat them down on patio stones just to kind of avoid putting any more weight on this deck as at the end of the day it is 50 000 years old so we want to be a little careful with it and for the skirting i could have gone with lattice but i'm not a psychopath so instead i took these one by six boards and just wrapped them all the way i then kind of notched a two by four inside it on top and while i'm sure there are better ways to do this it's what i did and i have no regrets then i just kind of continued working my way around the deck hiding any of the gaps that let you see the dark depths below i really was just trying to avoid seeing any of that and taking the approach of pretending like it doesn't exist there were quite a few spots where i had to cut out new holes for my posts and i don't actually own a jigsaw so i resorted to using the sawzall and drill it worked out although the cuts weren't always the cleanest but i did find a little fix for that which you'll see later here i'm beginning to install the railings now you can of course buy clips to attach the 2x4 to the posts but that cost money and i didn't think it was necessary considering you know the overall state of the rest of the deck i'm really okay with seeing a couple screw holes here and there it's not a big deal [Music] putting in these black balusters was a little bit of a pain at first because i kept dropping them but in the end i got there and it worked out nicely for the top rail i ended up going with a 2x4 for some reason i obviously should have used a 2x6 and i will probably change that in the future but for now it can stay i then put up a little bit of a privacy wall here the horizontal pieces you see which i'm using to screw to i kept level i think maybe i should have kept them parallel with the slope of the deck but i don't know this is this is just how it happened adding new posts like this was a little bit of a pain just having to cut everything out and then remove deck boards in order to add blocking but in the end i wanted these things to be solid and here is how i covered up any of the gaps it was just left over 1x6 which i ripped the edges off of and then cut them into these nice little squares reduce reuse recycle or something right i probably should have gone ahead and built a whole new stair for this part here but it is what it is and then i ran out of the shorter screws for the skirting so i temporarily just use brad nails to get it all in place [Music] then came the gazebo this was actually a 16 foot wide model which i think was just slightly too big for the space the 14-footer would have been a little bit nicer but they didn't have it in stock and at the end of the day i'd rather have too big than too small of course i wanted to have some lights in this thing but i didn't want to just have extension cords ran everywhere so i cut out this little hole fished a string under the deck into the house and then up the post of the gazebo the lower portion of the deck doesn't actually need rails but i think they add a lot to the appearance so i put them in anyways [Music] then i added this new stair the old one was just really sad and there was no chance of keeping it so i leveled the ground put in some patio stones and had this just kind of float on it and took some new deck boards and added two steps in total maybe i'm a little biased in this regard but i think that lighting goes a really long way when it comes to these kinds of projects these are just low voltage deck lights they're plug and play with one another and really simple to install the only thing to address really is having the first wire get to the driver because my driver's a little bit of a distance away i just took a wire and spliced the connections for the first deck light it's really straightforward process because it's low voltage you don't have to be concerned about anything going wrong i did want some sort of access to the lower part here so i built just a small gate on this side originally what i had planned was to have the 2x4 there that hides the top of the skirting to wrap all the way around but i just kind of forgot to do that so i don't know i mean it's fine because we can just never come to the side of the deck and pretend like it doesn't exist but it would have been nice to do this is just your basic role playing it's in my opinion just a really cost effective way to improve the overall vibe of your outdoor space now alongside this i also installed these rgb ic lights provided by govi these things are really easy to install they just stick up there and unlike regular tape light each diode is actually programmable this allows for some really cool ambience and it has so many settings that you can play around with i'll put a link down below if you want to get some for yourself to power all of this up i put this box up in the top corner just to kind of hide it i put in a regular plug because it's gfi protected from the inside and put on these weatherproof covers this one here is for the bbq lights as well as the deck lights to control all the lighting i put in this three game box the first device is a gfi which feeds the two switches i put in smart switches specifically lutron casetas as it allows you to control the lighting from your phone and also create time settings i originally had in dimmers because it's what i had on me although i changed them to the non-dimmable variety later because you don't really want to dim your plugs that's it for this one if you enjoyed the video maybe leave a like comment or subscribe and i'll see you in the next one take care [Music] you

Channel: Workin' with Wolkon

Views: 287,463

Keywords: Backyard makeover, Deck makeover, Patio makeover, Garden makeover, Diy deck, How to renovate a deck, How to stain a deck, Refinishing a deck

Id: orfPKhdu8ug

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021