Building an quick and inexpensive deck

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This is a very simple and inexpensive deck that you can build. Building the deck 8' x 8' meant that we did not have to do ANY cutting of the timbers. This was a great time and energy saver. The size also worked out to be just right for a small picnic table.

My son, Zachary, and I built this deck in just one afternoon for under $100.

Steps to building this deck

1. We made beams for the deck to rest on. We did this by nailing two of the timbers together. The garden timbers a roughly 3"x4." We nailed two of them together to form our beams, which 4"x6" beam. Plenty strong enough and since the are already treated they handle the weather great. We built three of these beams. We nailed the beams together with 6" twisted galvanized nails. You really need to pre-dill the holes when using these nails.
2. We placed the each beam on three rectangular concrete stepping stones. The beam placement was on beam on each side of the deck and one right down the middle. We made sure that the beams where all level to each other.
3. We simply started nailing the remaining garden timbers to the beams. Pre-drilling all of the holes was a bit time consuming, but neither my son or I could drive these 6" nails through the timbers without pre-drilling.

In the picture above the deck is about 5 years old. It has also been through a flood and floated off once. The water was about 5 1/2 feet deep here and the deck floated over into my neighbors yard. I screwed two large "eye screws" in the deck, hooked a chain up to it,  and drug it back over to our yard using my truck. The deck was not any worse for the experience.