Deck, Pergola and Screens, Mollymook

A spotted gum deck, a pergola over it, aluminium screens, and a steel beam where a wall used to be.

The job

The clients had a yard they looked at through a window rather than a space they used.

We built a large deck across the back of the house with a pergola over it and screening down one side for privacy, then opened the back of the house up so the two spaces became one.

Taking a wall out

The part that made this job worth doing was also the part that took the most working out.

To connect the house properly to the deck, a large doorway had to be opened up in an existing wall. That meant taking the load off the structure and putting a substantial steel beam in to carry it.

Structural work is where a job either goes very well or goes very badly. We planned it, propped it, got the beam in and made good. It went in without drama, which is exactly how you want it to go.

Making it look like it had always been there

A deck that looks bolted onto the back of a house is easy enough to build. One that looks like it was always meant to be there takes more care, and this is where most of the thinking went.

We lined the new roof fascia up with the existing roofline, so the addition reads as part of the house rather than something added to it. The new roof was pitched in the opposite direction to match the form of the existing one, and the ceiling was lifted to suit.

The deck itself was finished neatly into the existing brickwork, and we clad around the new door opening so the outside of the house ties together rather than showing a join.

Inside to outside, there's no step and no threshold to notice. You walk out rather than step down.

What it changed

The back of the house went from the part nobody used to the part they use most.

The screening is aluminium rather than timber, and it runs vertically on purpose. From inside you look straight through it to the ocean. From next door you don't look in at all.

Of everything we've built as Two Oceans, this is the one we'd point at first.

Work like this

Larger decks and outdoor areas suit us. There's structure in them, there's a finish that has to be right because somebody looks at it every day, and there's a real difference to the house at the end of it.

If you've got a yard you look at rather than sit in, that's the conversation.