The back deck wreck

This tree and this deck are the reason we own this house. When Jeff saw it online, he begged me to go look at the house even though it was so far away from our city life. We bought the house and the 200 year old Copper Beech tree came with it.

We learned these trees are very susceptible to drought, one of which we had a few years ago and it stressed the tree. So, we took care of the tree and also removed some of the decking that was choking the tree.

Then we had a nice deck with a huge hole in it.

Once the tree rebounded, we started to think about the best way to replace the deck. You can see the way the boards are warped where the tree;s growth has pushed the planks.

We are going to carefully replace the boards in a way that will make it easier to adjust when the tree grows.

But we aren't going to fully rebuild the deck this year, I'm sure in a few years we will have to revisit this, as you can see the tree is totally touching and growing over parts of the deck beams.