The Deck

Flowerbox & bench before

Back half of Deck before

Half of Deck closer to house before

After painting, but before installing bench slats and flowerbox "windowsills"

After painting, but before installing bench slats and flowerbox sills

With bench slats and flowerbox sills in place, ready to be painted

Flowerbox in upper right corner is the one that was completely replaced

View from under the Japanese Maple

Start of project - the rotted-out flowerbox was in corner under the Japanese Maple & Rhodedendron

Start of project - first batch of lumber, all used to make the new flowerbox under Japanese Maple & to replace sections of other flowerboxes that needed replacement as well.

What the flowerboxes and benches looked like before

Having torn out the original bench slats and reinforced the piers at their bases

The upright rectangle and the flat rectangle are the interior framework for the new flowerbox, to go into upper left corner.

Framework of new flowerbox (upper right) & the torn-out old slats of bench on right side, near hedges.

The new flowerbox in place under the Japanese Maple, sans "windowsill" around its top.

New flowerbox in-place (upper left), dirt from the original on tarp. Bench on the side of deck by hedges ran from one flowerbox to the other.  Note that the inside-facing wall of flowerbox to right had to be repaired/sistered, but that that flowerbox was in good enough condition that the sistering sufficed.

Had to build five new supports to give more strength to the benches.  I recycled some of the old wood to make these, and put pieces of the new wood on either side of the recycled 'center post' of each.  The supports are under the benches at the points where the benches make contact with any flowerboxes.

Been rebuilding the deck in the backyard for the past couple of weeks. It has been a much more complicated project than I originally intended. In a corner of the deck that's under the Japanese Maple and Rhodedendron bush there's a flowerbox that is completely rotted. I originally thought I'd only have to rebuild that, but after tearing that box out and seeing the rot in the wood of the benches attached to it, I decided that I had to replace those benches, too. When I went to Home Depot to buy same size wood slats for those benches, though, I was told that that dimension wood is not available any more. So I had to use other sized wood - 5 1/2 inches by 1 1/4 inches - and lay them side-by-side to make a 16 1/2 inch wide bench. It looks a lot plainer than the older style benches, but it gets the job done.  These are the photos of what I have done thus far.