See How to Build and Maintain Decks With These Video Tips 12 Videos

Here are the DIY Basics for building deck steps.

Two teams pull off impressive shaded deck structures in just two days.

Here are the DIY Basics for updating a deck with composite decking.

Build a custom deck and a perfect spot for stadium seating.

The Mega Crew builds a luxury deck with a hot tub and a dog staircase.

The Trex RainEscape is a simple drainage system for walkout decks.

The crew builds a blockbuster BBQ deck with an outdoor kitchen and hot tub.

The Mega Crew builds a two-story luxury cliffside deck with a spa.

DIY experts show you the ten best decks out there!

From spa-inspired decks to a Japanese living room, this top ten is a hit.

Eric and Nancy build a new deck complete with a pergola for shade.

Lou Manfredini shows Matt Lauer how to build a deck in 48 hours.

David Bloom and Lou Manfredini discuss deck sealers and stains.

Blending in with nature, this deck even has a tree growing through it.

Brad Staggs covers consumer info on deck-building accessories.

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Deck Design Ideas and Pictures | DIY

When we say Distinctive Deck Designs Ashburn deck builders personally come to your home for a free consultation, were talking about owner Mark Shriner himself. Mark takes his passion for being a deck and patio builder seriously, and takes the lead in gathering information that allows for timely and professional construction. Unlike many of our competitors, Distinctive Deck Designs has a single deck and patio building crew led by Mark Shriner and made up of experienced and conscientious patio builders. In other words youll always get the "A Team"e; on your job! Schedule your free on-site consultation today, and let our experienced contractors get to work accentuating your outdoor living experience with first-class patio construction.

Owner Mark Shriner would much rather swing a hammer than a golf club, and proves it by leading his team of Ashburn deck building professionals at every job site. Our experienced staff offers personalized and individualized service that includes:

The Ashburn deck construction professionals of Distinctive Deck Designs are excited at the prospect of bringing your vision to life.

If you live in Ashburn, a deck builder from Distinctive Deck Designs will take the time to help you create a relaxing outside haven for your home by getting to know you and your property. Great results stem from listening to the client and creating something that reflects their tastes and needs. Distinctive Deck Designs approaches each project with the goal of creating something beautiful and representative of you. From the first on-site visit through the sales process, drawings, construction process, etc., owner Mark Shriner will work closely with you.

We are proud to employ the finest builders of decks and patios in all of Virginia, and look forward to including you in the process from design through completion. At Distinctive Deck Designs every great project begins with a free on-site consultation. Schedule yours with owner Mark Shriner today!

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Ashburn, Virginia Deck Builder & Construction Services

DecksDeckPatio2015-05-13T18:56:28+00:00 When you visit our design center, you can see actual samples of materials various types of natural wood and composite materials in many varieties of textures and colors. We will help you select the right type for your installation, based on the design of the project, the surroundings and landscaping.

Additional detailed information about the types of deck materials and our construction techniques can be seen below the gallery simply press the Read More button.

Come see our outdoor display of a wide variety of deck materials, colors and styles. Our Outdoor Living Experts will be happy to explain the benefits of the different materials and construction techniques available, and show them to you. This is the best way to get the information that you need to start your outdoor living project.

Deck surfaces are available in a variety of materials. Natural Wood, Pressure Treated Wood, and Capped Composite materials are all the possibilities a homeowner needs to consider for their deck. Obviously there are advantages to each, and each has its limitations.

When we design a deck, we take into consideration, proper space planning to allow room for tables, chairs, barbecues, food prep areas and other features you would like to incorporate into your deck. We also take into consideration the size of the property and the ability to maintain views. We employ the use of wide stairs, called wrap around stairs, to keep that open air feeling to the area. The beauty of the landscape beyond can be brought onto the deck through the use of built in planters. Socializing is made simple and beautiful through the addition of custom seating built into the deck in a L Shape or 3 sided bench. Railings can be tailored through the use of manufactured rails and modifications that we have custom designed ourselves.

All of our decks are built to code including concrete footings 36 deep and 12 diameter. Our decks are designed to be safe and unique. For those clients not wishing to go with the traditional rectangular deck, an angular (octagonal), rounded, or curved deck and rails can be designed to suit their outdoor needs. Decks are built to bring the outdoor space up to the same level as the home. When faced with a steep slope, a higher deck can lead down to a lower deck creating multiple levels. A deck built around a portable hot tub gives the appearance of a built-in spa and grants easy access to the spa.

Wood decks can be installed with ringshank stainless steel or galvanized buglehead nails. An alternative method is coated or stainless steel deck screws.

It should be noted that the underlying deck structure is built with pressure treated wood for any of the decking surfaces mentioned. This is required for strength, rigidity, and long life.

Decking made of natural wood has a beauty unmatched by other materials but has regular maintenance requirements.

Cedar, Pressure Treated Lumber, and Iron Wood (IPE) as a decking surface, requires some maintenance on a regular basis. All can be stained to the owners color preference.

Western Red Cedar is one of the most beautiful, natural deck materials you can use. It is largely straight grained, reddish in color, and has a soft burnished look. Cedar has natural insect and decay resistance properties. Cedar is quite dimensionally stable and lies flat and stays straight.

Your cedar deck will also have sound suppression and absorption qualities. However, it does require some additional TLC to remain beautiful. This is a choice for those who are willing to go the extra step in maintenance to retain the beauty of a soft looking, wood deck.

Pressure Treated Wood is always used for framing all decks , it is sometimes used for the deck and rails when cost or longevity is important.

More Information: Western Red Cedar Lumber Association

Cedar Deck

Iron Woods, also called IPE, is the leading brand of an incredibly durable hardwood. It is highly rated for strength, hardness and durability. These qualities have been proven in demanding commercial applications, including a 25+ year life on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. It is strong, dense, and hard. It was tested by the US Navy in a Panama Canal study and was shown to be the top performer commercially available.

Iron Woods decking remains smooth and virtually splinter free for many years. Iron Woods naturally resists the most common problems to deck surfaces: it has excellent insect resistance, fire resistance, wear and chemical resistance. It has the unique properties that make Iron Woods one of the choices for your decking project.

During construction, we build the deck with hidden screws or hidden fasteners, and although it may cost more because of its labor intensity, it has furniture like grade and a 25 year warranty.

More Iron Woods Information: Cecco Trading Inc.

Iron Woods (IPE) Deck

Capped composite and PVC decking requires much less maintenance, although it still requires some. The material is generally a composite of wood and a plastic with a coated shell. These materials come in variety of colors, wood grains and profiles. This material has minimal maintenance and is the choice of many homeowners.

The Deck and Patio has a number of many different materials for both decking and rails on display at their Design Center from various vendors.

Trex Deck

Trex decking is the capped composite material that is often used by Deck and Patio. It has the longest history of use and experience and has shown its durability and adaptability. Trex is also our choice since the Deck and Patio Company is only one of eight contracting firms, nationwide, that provides advice to the manufacturer as a member of the Trex Advisory Board. We know the quality of the product and the care the manufacturer uses in its production specifications. Trex also shows its environmental concerns by using recycled materials in the manufacture of its decking. The Deck and Patio Company is also a Certified Trex Pro Installer meaning we have been thoroughly trained and judged skilled enough to hold this position.

All Trex Transcend decking is available for viewing in a variety of colors such as the new Tropical colors which have the look of real wood and the durability and low maintenance of composite materials. All of the choices can be seen on display in our new Design Center.

The Deck and Patio Company is pleased to use other composites of the clients choice. We can install deck materials made by Fiberon, TimberTech and Azek.

Fiberon Deck

Timbertech Deck

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Decks

Decks for Alexandria, Manassas, Fairfax, Stafford, and Other Communities in and Around Prince William County

With more than a quarter century of experience designing and building decks, Prince William Home Improvement is the trusted choice for professional deck installation services. We have unsurpassed skill and experience designing and building custom decks, and will provide a beautiful outdoor haven that you and your family are sure to enjoy for years to come. Our expert design consultants will use a state-of-the-art 3D software program to create a photorealistic deck plan that will allow you to see the deck of your dreams before we even build it. Plus, we build our decks with only the highest quality materials, including Trex Transcend and Trex Accent engineered boards and Southern pine wood.

There are many advantages to choosing Prince William Home Improvement for installation of decks, including:

No matter what type of decking you choose, you can rest assured that our highly trained professionals will design and build your deck to meet the highest standards for structural integrity so it will stand the test of time. The outstanding craftsmanship of our decks has helped us earn numerous awards, including recognition as a Top Deck Performer by Qualified Remodeler magazine. Were also a member of the North American Deck and Railing Association (NADRA), as well as a member of the Trex Council, so you can rest easy knowing that we truly understand our products and how they perform in the field.

Contact us today for more information about design and installation of decks and enclosures, or to ask about any of our other products and services, including patio installation, siding, replacement windows, and more. We proudly install decks throughout Prince William County and in surrounding cities, including Fredericksburg, Stafford, Arlington, Alexandria, and Waldorf, MD.

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Decks - Prince William Home Improvement

All Weather Decks - Contractors Builders Composite Wood Deck Decks Pergolas Gazebos Fences Overland Park | Olathe | Leawood

Voted #1 - 15 times on Angie's List for Best Kansas City Deck, Patio, etc. All Weather Decks specializes in building the best Kansas City Deck that will last for years to come at a price that you can afford today. We provide top quality workmanship and service.

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All Weather Decks - Voted #1 - 15 times on Angie's List ...

Mahogany is a great wood for outdoor decks, be it Cambara mahogany from South America or Meranti mahogany from Indonesia or the Philippines. It has a tight grain, does not splinter easily, is free of knots, and looks great when treated. But it is not perfect. It fades. It loses that rich red-brown color and turns grey.

The criminal here is the sun, specifically, its ultra violet rays. They will bleach the color out of any wood, including mahogany. If you block out those nasty UV rays with a roof or a thick canopy of trees then mahogany will keep that rich color. But you have no such luck. Your backyard mahogany deck is totally exposed to that evil sun. So what do you do? You need to block the UV rays, and that is best done with a pigmented, oil-based, protective coating. The pigments block out the suns rays and also add color.

(Jan 2015) I am thinking here about your deck in normal weather. If you are worried about your deck surviving a northern winter and about that four-letter word, s n o w , see my blog post about Snow Damage to your Deck. But just mentioning snow makes me cold. Lets get back to summer.

Fortunately, treating your deck floor is not difficult; it is project that you can do in an afternoon. Here are some tips. (I specifically address mahogany here, although these tips apply generally to any wood deck. For tips specific to pressure treated decks, see my blog post on Restoring PT.)

1. Why treat your mahogany deck? Treat it because it has faded to grey and you want to restore its original, rich color. Using a quality protective oil will extend its life.

Ready to re-treat

2. When: Treat your deck when you no longer like its color. Test it: if a drop of clear oil (or water) soaks into the wood within a few seconds, then the oil treatment will also soak in. But if the oil or water stays on the surface for five seconds or more, then wait. The oil treatment will not properly soak in, and your deck is not ready.

Maybe ready

3. How often you need to treat your deck is a function of how much direct sun it gets. In full sun, it will need treatment yearly. So treat it when it is new ideally after the first rainstorms wash it but within its first few weeks of life. Thereafter, to maintain its good color, treat it yearly or less frequently if it is shaded.

4. What parts of the deck you treat similarly depends on how directly the sun strikes each. On south facing decks, the sun hits horizontal surfaces directly, so youll need to treat the decks floor, stair treads, and rail tops most frequently. The sun is kinder to vertical surfaces, like rails, risers and deck trim; those youll need to treat only every several years.

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Eight Tips for Maintaining Your Mahogany Deck | Suburban ...

This article is about the playing cards created for trick-taking games and later used for divinatory and esoteric/occult purposes. For other uses, see Tarot (disambiguation). Not to be confused with taro.

The tarot (; first known as trionfi and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of playing cards (most commonly numbering 78), used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot. From the late 18th century until the present time the tarot has also found use by mystics and occultists for divination as well as a map of mental and spiritual pathways.

Like the common deck of playing cards, the tarot has four suits (which vary by region, being the French suits in Northern Europe, the Latin suits in Southern Europe, and the German suits in Central Europe). Each of these suits has pip cards numbering from one (or Ace) to ten and four face cards (King, Queen, Knight, and Jack/Knave) for a total of 14 cards. In addition, the tarot has a separate 21-card trump suit and a single card known as the Fool. Depending on the game, the Fool may act as the top trump or may be played to avoid following suit.[1]

Franois Rabelais gives tarau as the name of one of the games played by Gargantua in his Gargantua and Pantagruel;[2] this is likely the earliest attestation of the French form of the name.[citation needed] Tarot cards are used throughout much of Europe to play card games. In English-speaking countries, where these games are largely unplayed, tarot cards are now used primarily for divinatory purposes.[1] Occultists call the trump cards and the Fool "the major arcana" while the ten pip and four court cards in each suit are called minor arcana. The cards are traced by some occult writers to ancient Egypt or the Kabbalah but there is no documented evidence of such origins or of the usage of tarot for divination before the 18th century.[1]

The English and French word tarot derives from the Italian tarocchi, which has no known origin or etymology.[3] The singular term is tarocco, commonly known today as a term for a type of blood orange in Italian. When it spread, the word was changed to tarot in French and Tarock in German. There are many theories to the origin of the word, many with no connection to the occult.[4] One theory relates the name "tarot" to the Taro River in northern Italy, near Parma; the game seems to have originated in northern Italy, in Milan or Bologna.[5] Other writers believe it comes from the Arabic word turuq, which means 'ways'.[6] Alternatively, it may be from the Arabic taraka, 'to leave, abandon, omit, leave behind'.[3]

Playing cards first entered Europe in the late 14th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits of Swords, Batons or Polo sticks (commonly known as Wands by those practicing occult or divinatory tarot), Cups, and Coins (commonly known as disks, or pentacles by practitioners of the occult or divinatory tarot). These suits were very similar to modern tarot divination decks and are still used in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese playing card decks.[7]

The first known documented tarot cards were created between 1430 and 1450 in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna in northern Italy when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the common four-suit pack. These new decks were originally called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, and the additional cards known simply as trionfi, which became "trumps" in English. The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi is a written statement in the court records in Florence, in 1440. The oldest surviving tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.[8] During the 16th-century, a new game played with a standard deck but sharing the same name (triomphe) was quickly becoming popular. This coincided with the older game being renamed tarocchi.[1]

Picture-card packs are first mentioned by Martiano da Tortona probably between 1418 and 1425, since the painter he mentions, Michelino da Besozzo, returned to Milan in 1418, while Martiano himself died in 1425. He describes a deck with 16 picture cards with images of the Greek gods and suits depicting four kinds of birds, not the common suits. However the 16 cards were obviously regarded as "trumps" as, about 25 years later, Jacopo Antonio Marcello called them a ludus triumphorum, or "game of trumps".[9]

Special motifs on cards added to regular packs show philosophical, social, poetical, astronomical, and heraldic ideas, Roman/Greek/Babylonian heroes, as in the case of the Sola-Busca-Tarocchi (1491)[1] and the Boiardo Tarocchi poem, written at an unknown date between 1461 and 1494.[10]

Two playing card decks from Milan (the Brera-Brambilla and Cary-Yale-Tarocchi)extant, but fragmentarywere made circa 1440. Three documents dating from 1 January 1441 to July 1442, use the term trionfi. The document from January 1441 is regarded as an unreliable reference; however, the same painter, Sagramoro, was commissioned by the same patron, Leonello d'Este, as in the February 1442 document. The game seemed to gain in importance in the year 1450, a Jubilee year in Italy, which saw many festivities and the movement of many pilgrims.

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Tarot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

12 of 74 spots in Tokyo 85% 1815 votes

How was it?

Odaiba () is a popular shopping and entertainment district on a man made island in Tokyo Bay. It originated as a set of small man made fort islands (daiba literally means "fort"), which were built towards the end of the Edo Period (1603-1868) to protect Tokyo against possible attacks from the sea and specifically in response to the gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry.

More than a century later, the small islands were joined into larger islands by massive landfills, and Tokyo began a spectacular development project aimed to turn the islands into a futuristic residential and business district during the extravagant 1980s. But development was critically slowed after the burst of the "bubble economy" in the early 1990s, leaving Odaiba nearly vacant.

It was not until the second half of the 1990s, when several hotels, shopping malls and the Yurikamome elevated train line were opened, that Odaiba developed into one of Tokyo's most popular tourist attractions and date spots with a wide selection of shopping, dining and leisure options.

Despite the initial setbacks, several lavish development projects did materialize, including some of Tokyo's boldest architectural creations, such as the Fuji TV Building, Telecom Center and Tokyo Big Sight. Modern city planning furthermore provides Odaiba with plenty of green space and a pleasant division of motorized and pedestrian traffic using elevated walkways and the like.

Palette Town is a large shopping and entertainment complex consisting of the Venus Fort shopping mall, Toyota Mega Web, a Ferris Wheel, the Zepp Tokyo music venue and Tokyo Leisureland.

Access to Odaiba can be an attraction in itself, as the views of the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo's harbor and waterfront area from the Yurikamome elevated train and boats are quite spectacular. Furthermore, it is also possible to walk across the Rainbow Bridge.

The Yurikamome is an automated, elevated train with rubber tires, which connects Shimbashi Station on the Yamanote Line with all of Odaiba's attractions and Toyosu Station on the Yurakucho Subway Line. Trains depart every few minutes, and a ride between Shimbashi and Daiba Station takes 15 minutes and costs 320 yen. If you ride the Yurikamome more than twice, a 1-day pass for 820 yen is likely to pay off. The Yurikamome is not covered by the Japan Rail Pass.

The Yurikamome crosses the Rainbow Bridge to get to Odaiba and offers spectacular views of the harbor and the Tokyo waterfront. Sit or stand at the very front of the train for the most impressive views.

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Tokyo Travel: Odaiba (Daiba) - Japan Guide

Building your Decks - World of Tanks Generals Deckbuilding Strategies
A brief guide to building and customising your own decks in World of Tanks: Generals. Includes ideas on how to minimise weaknesses and maximise strengths, and how to keep the deck balanced....

By: AgingJedi

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Building your Decks - World of Tanks Generals Deckbuilding Strategies - Video

SEA Games 2015 mascot Nila spins on the decks
Official mascot of the SEA Games 2015, Nila, spins on the DJ decks at the unveiling of the official victory medal design for athletes, (Video: Adelene Wong/TODAY)

By: TODAYonline

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SEA Games 2015 mascot Nila spins on the decks - Video