We’ll Take One of Each

Two-Level Deck With Underdeck And Porch In Milton, GA

They hired us to build a deck, and somewhere in the middle of building it they asked whether we could put a porch on the end.

The Porch Wasn't in the Contract

What we quoted was a two-level deck. Trex on top, a finished room underneath, engineered beams so the lower level wouldn’t be full of posts holding it up.

Then the framing went in. A drawing is a drawing until the shape of the thing is actually standing in your backyard, and once it was, these clients started looking at the far end and thinking about what else it could be. The porch arrived as a change order partway through the build. Nobody had budgeted for it and they certainly didn’t have any regrets.

Two Fireplaces, One Chimney

There’s a wood burning fireplace in the porch and a second one directly beneath it on the lower level, both running up through the same brick chimney.

Stacking them takes more work than building two separately. The lower firebox has to carry the one sitting on top of it, both flues run the full height of the chimney side by side, and every bit of that gets settled before a single brick goes down. What the family got is a fire on whichever floor they happen to be on, and one chimney doing the work of two.

The porch wasn’t in the plan. They watched the deck go up and asked if we could keep going.

The Two Areas

The Porch

Two hundred and eight square feet under a gable with a beadboard ceiling, closed in with EZE-Breeze windows and a fire at one end. The part nobody planned, and the part they use most.

The Deck and the Room Below

Three hundred and sixty-eight square feet of Trex Transcend up top with composite railing around it, and the same footprint again underneath, kept dry and finished properly with the second fireplace.

The Details

The Double Exit Stair

The stair breaks at a landing and gives you two ways off it. One heads for the yard, the other for the patio, so nobody crosses the whole property to get where they’re going.

Beadboard on Both Levels

The porch ceiling and the ceiling under the deck are finished the same way. Standing in either one, you’re clearly in the same house, which is not usually true of an upstairs room and a downstairs one.

Windows and a Fire

EZE-Breeze panels close the porch against weather and the wood burner handles the cold. Between them the room stays in use through a Georgia January, which screens alone never manage.

One of Nearly Everything

Component	Product
Porch	Gable roof, 208 sq. ft.
Porch ceiling	Beadboard
Windows	EZE-Breeze
Fireplaces	Double stacked, wood burning
Decking	Trex Transcend, 368 sq. ft.
Railing	Trex Transcend composite
Framing	Engineered wide span beams
Stair	Landing with double exits
Drainage	Premium watertight system
Under deck ceiling	Premium beadboard finish

About $139,000 to build in the north metro today. This one carries close to every feature we build regularly, which is what puts it where it is.

Plans Change Once It's Standing

The porch here wasn’t in the original contract. These clients saw the deck framed up, understood what the space could actually be, and asked us to keep going. That happens often enough that we design for it. Come see us in Woodstock and we’ll show you where a build could grow later if you decide you want more.

or visit us at Woodstock Design Center 135 Village Center W, Suite 100