So now that I embellished a little about my deck (husband says that I embellished by about 4m x4m) I will need to come clean.

Here is the deck:

Deck

Before, it was just a slab of concrete and when searching on what to do with this ugly bit of concrete, husband came across these:

Decking tiles

They are so easy to lay, it took us about 10 minutes (most of that time was cutting the tiny plastic clips at the bottom.) There are other brands, ones from Freedom Furniture which are little more expensive and you buy the plastic connectors separately.

The upside – They’re made from hardwood, look great and the laying is so easy to do. I mean if Mr UNhandyman husband can do it, then really anybody can. You can get these particular ones from Bunnings.

The downside – Still quite expensive (it’s about $90 per square metre – still cheaper than a real deck but STILL EXXY), they need to be oiled. We tried to lay them so the decking boards lined up completely but because of the differences in tone, it just ended up looking silly. I’m happy with this parquetry type look. Theres is a small gap in between the boards which means food can easily fall in between. I mean I’m not really that fussed, the ants can sort that out but who really wants ants there, anyway?

We decided only to do this part of the garden in the decking tiles (we have a much larger area coming off the informal dining (that sounds a bit posh, doesn’t it – the EATING area) because it turned out much more expensive than we had hoped. Plus, there are much better looking decking tiles on the market which have proper edging and the like and we will need to investigate. We may just end up paving it anyway but that’s all for another time. In the meantime I will enjoy sitting on my new deck, internet surfing, drinking tea and watching the boys play. Don’t hate!

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