When we bought the house there was a covered patio jutting out of the ground floor. It was built cheaply and while it offered some protection from the cold during Winter it wasn’t a pleasant place to sit.
Since we knew that we wanted to make the ground floor a garden apartment anyway it made more sense for us to create some outdoor space upstairs, while also continuing to provide some outdoor space for the garden apartment.
Firstly we needed to pull down the existing structure and tear up the astroturf
Here you can see we didn’t upgrade one of the windows in anticipation of installing a deck door
The weather delayed us slightly between late snow and rain but we were lucky that because there was an existing structure the paperwork was relatively light. Without that covered patio we’d have been months in approvals!
Then the slats and the start of the stairs go in, it was important that we had stair access to the back garden because the existing back door was now only accessible through the rental property.
Minion needs regular access to the garden for secret doggy business and so the contractors were kind enough to build stairs with “kind to corgi” step heights.
Next the posts were installed and we were very close to a functional deck, just … we could only access it by climbing through a window so it was time to install the back door.
First we cut the stone to size for the door and removed the paneling from inside the window frame.
Then we installed a traditional style door that matched the recently installed windows and a small light window at the top to fill the frame.
We still had all out deck furniture in storage ready for our newly built deck.
The umbrella never survived transfer from Australia though so we needed something new. The technology choices have improved significantly since I last looked too, no more worrying about the umbrella through the table carrying things away with the wind.
Some postcap solar lights and we’re ready for showtime!