A Sustainable Deck

They had a good reason for naming our nearby town Cedarville. Before roads were built to the area in the 1920s, Cedarville was a lumbering and fishing village. The local white cedars are largely second growth trees but some are quite tall and their smell is great.

We had a large cedar growing in front of our deck, but it was aging and starting to lean. We figured that the tree was growing diseased, and it was blocking more of our view from the deck down to Lake Huron. We decided that the best thing we could do was to take the tree down. So we asked our neighbors Dave and Kevin St. Onge, who live year-round in the area and who own a sawmill, to cut down the cedar tree in the upcoming winter.

We had also been thinking for some time about building a small platform deck at the waterfront. Kevin suggested recycling some of the wood into a deck near the waterfront. They cut the tree in the winter and sledged the trunk to the mainland behind a snowmobile.

They cut the trunk into boards as well as a thick section for a bench top. After kiln drying, Kevin assembled the deck and bench the following spring. So even though we have lost a beautiful tree, we gained a great deck and bench by the waterfront.