Size Matters

This is One Really Big, Really Expensive Deck

BY GLEN STARKEY

Outdoor living is a way of life, in California especially. We love our gardens and yards, our front porches, our patios, and perhaps most of all our decks. Some of us simply dwell on them, barbecuing, eating, talking, living.

So it's little wonder that we're willing to spend a great deal of money creating these outdoor living spaces. But can you imagine spending in the mid-six figures on a deck?

For one Atascadero couple, creating the perfect outdoor space for relaxing and entertaining makes the price tag worth it, though they certainly didn't set out to spend that much money. Of course, when you hire an award-winning architect, one known for going hog-wild creatively, you've got to expect a few cost overruns in seeing a vision through. And what a vision! The design is intensely intricate, and the craftsmanship is absolutely shiplike.

The Deck

Just how big a project is it? At 2,400 square feet, it’s almost 800 square feet bigger than the average American home. The deck, which has multiple levels, hangs over a 40-foot cliff, held up by 42 24-inch diameter caissons sunk as deep as 14 feet into bedrock.

The deck is built of pi, a super-dense, super-hard, fire-, insect-, and weather-resistant South American wood [see sidebar]. If the boards were laid end to end, they’d stretch halfway to Templeton. It took nearly 40 gallons of marine-grade teak oil to treat the deck. Twelve tons of woods, scraps shorter than 18 inches, were discarded.

Nearly two years in the making–it won't be finished for a couple of months–the project employed as many as a dozen carpenters at a time. In all 23 carpenters worked on the project. The building process was so intense and the work so edifying that two of them, James Fondell and Justin Pockgrant, came on as unskilled laborers and left as journeyman carpenters. Several other carpenters didn’t have the stamina to see the project through.

More than 25,000 fasteners were used. Not one can be seen. Every stainless steel screw is countersunk into the wood, and the hole plugged. Carpenter Floyd Meador cut, placed, and sanded every single one of 25,000-plus plugs by hand.

The deck is well lit via recessed "light ropes," controlled by rheostat, that have been tucked under handrails.

Other than the milling of the wood, no right angles are in the design. Most of the deck's modules are hexagonal. Some compound mitered cuts were so complex that the carpenters made special jigs to cut them. All steps and benches are cantilevered.

Many sections of the deck, especially where difficult angles met one another, were mocked up in Douglas fir; pieces were eyeball-cut and then fitted with the others to suss out the intricate design before any expensive ipé was cut.

As carpenter Fondell said, "It's like one huge jigsaw puzzle."

The Architect

Who could have conceived of such a thing?

Atascadero architect (and 1987 Cal Poly graduate) Scott Jay Smaby thrives on pushing limits. The award-winning architect has a reputation as one of the most dynamic and innovative architects in the area. He designs high-end custom homes that incorporate a site’s topography into the design. It's a specialized field with an exclusive and moneyed clientele.

"I don't let clients interview me," said Smaby, whose father is an engineer and whose mother is a fine artist. "I interview them. People come to me and say, 'We have this lot, do what you do.'"

Smaby, who also has a home inspection business, met Jerry and Nadine Bowman when he came to inspect their home. In passing, Jerry Bowman mentioned he was looking for an architect to design a deck, something "really nice."

"I asked him what he wanted and he said, 'I don't know, you're the architect.' So I said, 'OK, I'll draw up something.' "

What Smaby came up with is the magnum opus of decks, an absolute behemoth of visionary design. Even though removing the hillside’s native oaks would have made building the deck easier, Smaby, who is committed to improving the land, designed the deck around them, a choice that added thousands of dollars to the cost of the project.

"I studied under a master architect, Sixo Moreira, who studied under Bruce Goff [a peer of Frank Lloyd Wright’s], and one of the tenets of Moreira's approach was that you had to leave the land better off than it was before, otherwise you shouldn't bother designing and building a structure."

Smaby studied wind patterns, sunlight, rain–everything–and then incorporated the topography of the hillside and an existing forest of trees into his design for the Bowman deck. He designed angled trellises that will let more light pass in the winter, less in the summer. When at last he presented his design, he didn't think the Bowmans would go for it.

"I designed it so that some elements could be removed, such as [a] pavilion, but Jerry liked everything he saw," said Smaby. "He kept saying, "I like this, let's keep it. And I'd say, 'You know where we're going with this, right Jerry?' But he kept saying yes to everything I came up with.

"The thing about being an architect is you have to be able to read people," continued Smaby. "You're part designer, part builder, part psychologist, part interpreter. You have to listen to what a client really wants, figure out what they can afford, assess needs, decipher what they actually want from what they tell you they want. Clients don't always have the language they need to explain themselves, so as an architect I really have to decipher that for myself."

In the case of the Bowmans, they wanted a showcase, something on which to entertain. Jerry, a retired vice president of Bank of America, is used to traveling in moneyed circles, and Smaby told him that if he saw this design through, it would end up on the cover of Sunset magazine. Still, how do you justify such a large price tag?

"The thing about Jerry and Nadine is they don't plan on ever selling this house," said Smaby. "Jerry told me he was going to die there. So they're doing this for themselves."

For the Bowmans, it was worth every penny. It was also worth the annoyance of two years of construction.

The Contractor

When Eric Schaefer agreed to oversee the construction of the Bowmans’ deck, he had no idea what he was getting into. Because the job was huge and incorporated an remarkably complex design, Schaefer had no basis for accurately estimating the cost and time it would take to build it.

Obviously the Bowmans have the patience of Job.

Said Schaefer: "The owners said they wanted a 'really nice deck.' They just said it to the wrong architect. And everything cost more than expected.

Caissons (piers) had to be driven into bedrock to shore up the hillside in case of earthquake. To place the caissons, a huge crane with a boom big enough to stretch over the house had to be rented. By the time the caissons were placed and the concrete poured, the bill was already up to $105,000.

The raw wood alone cost more than $80,000. A geological survey was required. Temporary roads had to be cut into the hillside. Structural engineers were consulted. The whole thing is simply overengineered–it could probably hold up a freeway overpass.

Overseeing the workers was tough, too. At first Schaefer couldn't find enough carpenters to keep the job moving. He was begging workers from contractor friends, pulling his own workers off other jobs. Eventually a full crew was assembled, but their work took months.

And a lot of carpenters simply couldn't cut it (forgive the pun). They were used to schlepping up a structure. They weren’t used to the painstaking detail work this job required. The guys who saw the project through were unbelievably dedicated, and maybe a little crazy.

The Workers

According to the job foreman, a master finish carpenter named Christopher O'Brien, only a handful of carpenters in the county have the expertise to do this job, and of that handful, probably none would have wanted to.

"I sometimes had to do 10 or 12 cuts on each piece to get it to fit, and if I cut it too short, I had to start again," said O'Brien. "That's why I did a lot of mock-ups in Douglas fir. I spent two, three, four hours cutting one board.

"Some of the carpenters who worked on this deck looked at it like enslavement or penitence; they thought it was a punishment," he continued. "But those of us who stayed, who kept at it, came to feel it was a privilege to work on such a project."

The work was difficult, intense, and exacting.

According to contractor Schaefer $12,000 of labor–that's materials excluded–was spent on just one bench and the opening for one of the trees to come through the deck.

Finish carpenter Greg Carroll may have summed up the project best when he said, "This is the biggest piece of furniture I've ever worked on."

In fact, none of the eight core carpenters who stuck with the project had ever worked on anything like the Bowman deck–a custom job from beginning to end.

"This structure is entirely handmade, done by artisans, a one-of-a-kind thing," said Schaefer. "This approach to craftsmanship has been, for the most part, lost."

Added O'Brien: "We used all the traditional tools: pencils, measures, knives, squares, chisels, punches, drills, saws. Nothing was prefabricated. Every board was custom-cut to size and shape. We were making our tools do things they weren't designed to do."

Many of the carpenters who worked on and then quit the project couldn't get used to the painstaking detail and slow pace of the work. According to Carroll, this job differed from most others in more than just size and craftsmanship. "Our hierarchy of importance was safety, quality, and production, which is rare for a construction job. Usually it's production, production, production."

The crew lived by the motto, "If it's not tight, it's not right." At every corner, every angle, indeed anywhere two pieces of wood met, precision was key.

"Right from the outset it was made clear to me that we were to use the highest quality materials available and that all the work was to be of the highest quality," said O'Brien. "Jerry [Bowman] said, 'Let's do it right the first time.' "

O'Brien, an in-demand finish carpenter and innovative designer in his own right, had never before seen so much care taken on a deck project.

"It's a monument to architecture and craftsmanship," he said. "To find a project of this nature is really rare. Most people think this kind of skilled work isn't being produced anymore, but this project is proof that there still is this kind of craftsmanship available."

Of course, you have to be willing to pay. A skilled worker like O'Brien doesn't come cheap, and when you've got eight guys working...well, it doesn't take long for the labor bill to add up.

After working together for so long, the crew is more resembles a tight-knit army unit than a mere group of workers. At one point during the interview, a crew member drove up the driveway. Without seeing the car, the workers said in near-unison, "Eric's here." They know the sound of each other's cars.

"This job brought a lot of different people and personalities together," said Carroll. "Some didn't fit in and left, but the group that survived got along really well. When you work side-by-side with people for months and months, you become sort of a loose family."

The Owners

Jerry and Nadine Bowman are not ostentatious people. They don't drive Mercedes Benz's or spend their money frivolously. They wanted to make their outdoor living space as hospitable as the inside of their home. And they have.

"I've been fortunate," said Jerry. "We decided we were going to do this one time, so let's do it right. We're not going anywhere. And no, this didn't add that much more value to our house–it added some value. But I don't think of a house as an investment. It's a place to rest and entertain."

Still, many people can't conceive of spending so much on a deck.

"No, I wouldn't expect them to," said Jerry, who went on to explain exactly why it did take so long and why everything was so expensive. He has become as involved in the project as those working on it. After all, this has been going on in his backyard for almost two years.

"I have to admit," said Jerry, "we're wearing out. We got to a point when I thought, 'God, when are these guys going to leave?'"

But most of the reasons the deck has taken so long can be laid to choices the Bowmans made, such as building around existing oak trees. Why not just cut them down and replant?

"We wanted more of a natural look and didn't want to scar the hillside. In a few years, when the landscaping fills in, you won't be able to see the deck, except maybe the gazebo. We figured we'd never cut down an oak tree because it is part of our oak forest."

Conservation, commitment to utilizing the existing terrain, securing the services of an award-winning architect, using quality raw materials, and the employment of journeyman carpenters made this one expensive deck–beautiful without being ostentatious, showy without being gaudy.

"I try to live comfortably," said Jerry. "I buy a car because it's mechanically good, not for status. We're just normal people. We've been lucky, yes. I did well. But if you had talked to me 20 years ago, I was struggling like everyone else. We have friends with money and friends who don't have a lot of money, but they're friends because they're good people with good hearts. That's all we care about. We're just average people. With this project, I wanted to do it well. We did everything in our lives on budgets, so when we started this I said, 'Let's do this one thing right the first time.' There were probably cheaper ways to do this, but that wasn't the issue. This is the way we wanted to do it." Æ

Glen Starkey is a New Times staff writer.