Deck Designs: Plus Railings, Planters, Benches

As I am planning a new deck, I purchased this book. It gave me lots of great ideas and pictures. It's not a how-to book, but great at creative and beautiful decking ideas. It shows great ideas of putting various composite decking colors together as accents and is for someone wanting ideas to take their deck up a notch. If u just want a square deck without benches, edging, composite, planters or unusual railing design, than this book isn't for you. But it's loaded with fantastic pictures that would give anyone new ideas to spruce up an ordinary deck plan. It espeically shows some creative rounded decks, like on the front page that u don't see very often and really look 21st century. I wanted a book to give ideas of a more contemporary and clean look than a traditional deck, so this book was great for me. I showed this book to my landscape designer and it gave us several good ideas and she said she was going to purchase it as a reference book.

Well-written and researched book, consists more of deck shots more than how-tos, but the featured contractors are pros and the decks are well done. Features lots of top-end composite decking including CorrectDeck.CX

If it hadn't been for this little gem of a book, I'd have ended up with exactly what I thought a deck was: a 10x30' rectangle on stilts outside my back door. Thanks to the inspiring designs outlined here, I was able to upgrade my $4K do-it-yourself deck with some snazzy details and useful layouts with little additional work and expense. Please do yourself the favor of flipping thru the pages of a book like this - if for nothing else than to see how it can be done by the best designers and builders.No, just like me you will never be able to afford the hand-sanded grade A redwood beauties that are featured on a couple of these spreads - materials alone would run into six figures. But you will be able to steal the design of the railing, or perhaps the notion of a split level or a nifty little nook for a bench or some other detail from the top end decks. There's enough closeups and sketches of the design to run with a concept that you find appealing, and the narrative will help you think thru the elements of your design that might open up new possibilities. After reading it from cover to cover a couple of times I shared the book and my comments on post-its with the contractor I had hired to help me complete my project, and it inspired him to come up with some ideas of his own, as well as better understand where I wanted to go with the project.

I almost made the mistake of letting the contractors design my deck. They came up with a big boring rectangle. Thank goodness I bought this book first! It is packed with many wonderful ideas, including photos and tips to making a deck interesting and functional. It covers layout, railing design, and yard and use considerations. It is a very small investment for a big project, I suggest that anyone building a deck take a look at this book before proceeding.

Deck Designs packs in a wealth of deck design ideas and patterns, featuring designer's unique approaches and their tips on how the deck feature was achieved. Color photos of patterns and decks supplement information on design considerations and details on construction techniques for the homeowner who wants to create his own custom deck.