Deck

A deck is the hard-surfaced part of an outdoor living area, built against a house and entered straight from a room inside it. It is not an ornament at the edge of the garden. The idea is that the living space of the house carries on outdoors, so the deck is where a household sits, eats and gathers when the weather allows, and it usually takes more thought and more of the budget than any other part of the grounds.

Whether a deck gets used comes down to three things, and the surface is not one of them. It has to open directly off a room people already use, or the extra few steps stop them going out. It has to feel enclosed, with planting or fencing along the boundary, so the platform is not overlooked from every side; a deck in the open is built and then avoided. And because it is used mostly in warm weather, something has to shade it, which the deck cannot do for itself. A tree that drops its leaves is the usual answer, placed on the side the afternoon sun comes from: it cuts the heat in the warm season, lets the low sun back through once the leaves fall, and shades the house behind it too.

A flat wooden surface lying open to the sky is the hardest job any finish has to do, because water sits on it instead of running off. Paint is the wrong choice, since moisture moving through the wood pushes the film off in flakes. A penetrating semi-transparent stain or a water-repellent preservative soaks in instead, and one coat lasts roughly two to four years. The test is to splash water on the boards: beading means the treatment is still working, soaking in means it is due. Recoating is best done at the start of the warm season, the old surface scrubbed with a stiff brush and any mildew or grey weathered residue taken off with an oxygen-based rather than a chlorine cleaner.