Decked Out

When starting out, we had the ingenious idea of installing a flat roof membrane across the back half of our house and topping it with a large deck. Throughout the building process, it’s one of the things we continually showed off with pride. And – not to be boastful – but it’s pretty awesome; it consists of approximately 700 square feet of private deck, opening out to forested land that will never be developed thanks to the fact that it’s a historic battlefield. But did we ever take a step back during the design phase to question whether it would be worth the extra effort? Of course not.

Approximately a year ago, we installed the tapered foam and EPDM membrane required for insulation, water flow, and waterproofing. Since the area was not visible from the road and was fully functional (waterproofed and walkable), we figured that we could get occupancy by simply adding a railing. However, the chief city inspector made it abundantly clear that since our deck is larger than 200 square feet, we were going to have to install all the decking material before they would let us move in.

We begrudgingly headed out to buy some wood for our deck, changing our plans slightly when we found some composite deck board on sale at Lowe’s. We needed more than they had in stock, so they cheerfully took our money and “put an order in for the rest”. And thus began the saga of the decking material:

December 16:

We purchased every eight foot long piece of the composite decking material they currently had in stock (about 40) and went home with them that day. In addition, we placed the order for 160 more pieces, paying for everything up front. The cashier told us she put in an order and put down a tentative pickup date of December 26.

Early to mid January:

John made several calls but never managed to get through because the phone system reroutes you back to the main line if no one picks up in a certain amount of time… and no one ever picked up in time. He resorted to stopping by in person to check up on the status of the material we had ordered. Here’s an overview of a few of these visits:

• He was literally told to stop bothering them and that they would call when the order came in (they didn’t even have his number on the order).
• We stopped by together and finally found someone remotely helpful, who figured out that an order had never been placed. Their system simply read that they had negative 160 pieces in stock, but did nothing about it.
• He was told that they had called me and left a message (they hadn’t), but had no other information about the order (including having no idea what they had supposedly called about). John was told that the manager would be contacting us within a day or two to follow up (we were never contacted).

January 29:

It all came to a head when – after calling Lowe’s another 4 times – John finally got in touch with someone knowledgable. He was told that the material was no longer in stock, the supplier had changed the color, the old stuff they have remaining wasn’t enough to fill our order, and it would be full price. Not only were we pissed about the thousands of dollars we had basically loaned them 6+ weeks ago, but we had already built deck pieces out of the boards that we purchased on day one. So we had already invested time and money in the project, and couldn’t just switch colors/products in the middle.

John ended up personally driving to four different Lowe’s and buying up their entire stock until we had enough. Since there weren’t enough of the eight foot long boards, we also bought all the 16 foot boards, but didn’t have a vehicle to transport them. By this point, the manager of Lowe’s became aware of the situation and ended up returning our money and then selling us the material for 75% off the full priced value and promising free delivery of the long pieces that Friday. Even so, we both agreed that the savings were not worth the headache.

February 1:

Despite the fact that Lowe’s called me the day before to confirm the delivery, they never showed up. John woke up early and spent the whole day down at the house waiting for the materials to arrive. When he finally reached a representative, he was told that the delivery was scheduled for February 15th, and they insisted that the materials weren’t currently in stock. They eventually realized their error and delivered it a few days later.

The one bright side is that the manager took the situation seriously and had some lengthy conversations with John about how to improve things moving forward. Apparently, he had a staff meeting where he asked if anyone had talked to a customer inquiring about some decking material and about half of them raised their hands. Yet nothing was ever done about it. Sadly, this wasn’t our first bad experience with that Lowe’s, and I doubt we’ll ever go back again.

Once we finally had all the boards, we set about creating all the pieces. John came up with a simple but sleek design pattern that allowed us to build separate removable pieces that look good as a whole and lets water flow underneath. He created a jig to help with the spacing of the boards so each piece would be the exact same size. We then attached EPDM to the bottom of each footer to ensure that the wood wouldn’t tear holes in the waterproofing membrane and put them in place.

The jig John created to help with consistent sizing and spacing between pieces

Boards were attached to the bottom of each piece to leave a gap for water flow and an extra layer of EPDM was stapled to each of these feet

We built stairs off the deck that never actually touch the house (this is to prevent termites from bypassing all the barriers we put in place and reaching our house via these stairs).

We stacked up pieces on the EPDM seam in an effort to let the weight flatten the joint and reduce the wobbling