Sizing and laying out a deck

Almost every deck conversation starts with a size that came from nowhere. Sixteen by twenty, because that sounds right. The trouble is that a deck too small for the furniture is useless and a deck too big is expensive, and both mistakes are permanent in a way that a paint color is not.

Four things set a footprint, and they are worth working in this order.

1. The recorded plat

Before anything else, find out where you cannot build. Meridian subdivision lots carry recorded easements: a strip along the rear boundary, narrower ones down the sides, and a wider one on the street side of a corner lot. The city is explicit that a structure standing in the required rear yard is likely encroaching, and that if a beneficiary needs access it may have to be moved and replaced at the owner's expense.

On a modern Meridian lot, where the back yard is not deep to begin with, the rear easement takes a serious bite out of what is available. That is a bigger constraint than any design preference, and the plat settles it in ten minutes. The easements post goes through what to look for on it.

2. The furniture

A deck is a floor for objects you already own, so start with the objects. Not a catalogue of typical sizes, which will be wrong about your table: the actual table, the actual chairs, the grill you have or the one you are about to buy.

Two things people leave out and then regret. The first is that chairs get pulled back, so a dining zone is bigger than the table by a margin nobody accounts for until the chair legs are off the edge. The second is circulation: the route past somebody who is seated. If that route is tight, people stop using it, and one end of the deck quietly becomes storage.

Work out those three zones for your own household and you have a footprint that came from your life rather than from a round number. The decks that end up unused are almost always the ones sized down at the quote stage, because the smaller figure looked more comfortable on paper than the deck turned out to be in use.

3. The door and the height

Where the back door sits above the finished ground decides more than most people realize, because it decides whether the deck has a guard.

A deck low enough to step off does not need one. That is cheaper, and it is visually far more open, with nothing standing between the kitchen window and the lawn. On flat Meridian ground it is often achievable by stepping the deck down a level from the door rather than running it out flat.

Once the surface clears that line, three costs arrive together: a guard around the whole open perimeter, a stair flight rather than a step, and a handrail on the flight. Above that again come longer posts, larger footings, and skirting to think about. Stepping down to stay low is worth pricing as an option even when the door is high, because the saving is not a rounding error. The railing guide covers what a guard and a stair run cost.

4. Which way it faces

In this valley, orientation decides whether the deck gets used at all. A west-facing back yard with a July normal high near 93 degrees is uncomfortable from the middle of the afternoon until early evening, which is exactly the window a household would otherwise be outside in.

If the yard faces west or southwest, plan the shade at the same time as the footprint. That might be a solid roof over part of it, a pergola, or simply putting the seating zone where the house itself casts a shadow late in the day. All three are design decisions, and all three are cheaper now than later. The shade guide works through them.

Shapes that work

The simple rectangle. Cheapest per square foot, and the right answer more often than designers admit. Squarer proportions also cost less to rail than long thin ones, because rail is priced on perimeter and a square encloses more area per foot of edge than any other rectangle.

Two zones with a step between. A dining area at door level and a lounge or fire pit area a step down. More framing, but it defines spaces without walls, and dropping the far zone can take it low enough to lose the guard along that run.

The wrap. Turning a corner of the house to catch a different aspect, which is useful where the back yard faces west and a side yard faces north. Expensive per square foot, because a wrap is nearly all perimeter and perimeter is where the framing complexity and the rail both live.

What to avoid: the long narrow strip. It has the perimeter of a much larger deck, so it rails like one, and the width is never quite enough for a table and a route past it, so the furniture ends up in a line.

Sketch it on the ground

Before anyone quotes, mark the footprint in the yard with a hose, some spray marking paint, or a few stakes and string, and put the actual furniture inside it for an evening. It costs nothing and it settles arguments a drawing cannot. It also shows immediately whether the grill has ended up in a doorway and whether the route to the gate still works.

Once the shape is settled, the cost estimator will put a range around it in about thirty seconds, and the cost guide explains what each line in that range is doing.