When you’re looking at adding onto your house, many people often think about adding a new bathroom or bedroom. Maybe you’re thinking about turning your garage into a bonus room or other extended room.

While a deck really isn’t a room, it’s still a significant addition to your house. It’s the place for hangouts, summer barbeques, or just to relax and read in your backyard.

But what should you be considering before building a deck? Obviously, you’re going to look at how much it costs to build a deck, but after that, there are plenty of other determinants that you should be focusing on. Let’s take a look at some of the top things below.

The Location

Depending on the layout of your house, you may only have a few choices of where to put your deck. Naturally, you want to put it in an easily accessible place, but here, the location has more to do with the beating sun and elements that may affect your deck.

Your deck is going to be bearing a lot of the elements, like sunlight, wind, snow, and rain (depending on where you live obviously). The deck’s position and location could affect how it handles all of those potentially hazardous weather elements.

Materials

While you might be thinking more about the layout, color, and eventual furniture, you’re also going to want to think about the materials your deck will be built out of. 

Different woods have different advantages and disadvantages.

For example, redwood is water-resistant, but it’s rather soft, which means it can be prone to denting. Composite decking is easy to clean and resistant to most weather elements but doesn’t look as good. Lumber is affordable and easy but is more susceptible to water and snow damage.

Budget

Ah yes, everything always comes back to the money question. By now, you’re probably asking yourself, “how much does it cost to build a deck?”

Unfortunately, there’s no blanket answer out there, and that’s largely going to depend on two things; the size of the deck and the materials used. Going with wood is going to be more expensive than composite or recycled materials, but you can have a bit more flexibility with wood.

Make sure you have a budget ahead of time and stick to it, so you’re not spending your entire paycheck for your new deck.

The Extras

Here’s where a deck truly becomes your deck. You’ve got the foundation down, so now it’s time to turn it into something unique.

You should be considering some other designing things like roofing, railing, lights, and furniture. That’s not even mentioning fun extras such as a grill or TV. Remember, you will also have to factor these into your budget, but they can always come later, setting yourself up for stages of deck building.

The Legal Requirements

If you’ve never built something or made an addition to your house, then you might not be aware of the massive amount of codes and legal acquirements that you’re going to have to adhere to.

There are environmental codes, permits to obtain, and other requirements that you will need to follow. This is something you’re going to want to take off first before you get too deep into your plans. Not following these codes could mean having to start over or make costly adjustments down the line.