As a lurker I have benefitted so much from the collective wisdom on this forum. We recently tore down a small deck that held an inset, smallish spa to make way for a larger deck to accommodate a swim spa. That deck looked so good we decided to change out the railings on the existing decks and in doing so found that one of them was in grave structural trouble. One of the supports was in the ground but not on a concrete footer, just in a hole sitting on a couple of bricks at the bottom of that whole! One of the 12 ft wooden columns holding up a sceened porch was bowing, so we decided to jack up everything and have supports made of

steel, then build Georgian style columns around them of Azek.

I knew we were going to use opaque stain, so we opted for PTP that was kiln dried, grade clear or better, planed on two sides. The wood is beautiful and looks good on the deck floor as well as the railings, which we made on site with 1" square black aluminum pickets.

Here are a few pictures--- not quite finished, but on our way!

and here is what the old deck looked like:

{{!gwi}}