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How To Build A Deck // DIY Home Improvement

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A backyard slab of dirt becomes a full attached deck in one Lowe’s-sponsored walkthrough.

Chris, the woodworker behind the YouTube channel Third Coast Craftsman, spends 16 minutes and 36 seconds proving that building a deck isn’t the intimidating weekend-killer most homeowners assume it is. Published November 2, 2018, in paid partnership with Lowe’s Home Improvement, the video “How To Build A Deck // DIY Home Improvement” follows a single-level, attached wooden deck from footings to finished stairs. There’s no skipped step and no vague hand-waving — just the sequence in order, with the tools and materials named as they’re used.

• Chris designed the deck using Lowe’s desktop Deck Designer software, which produced a 3D render plus an itemized materials list and cut plan.
• He took that printout to a local Lowe’s store, which pulled the framing lumber, decking boards, and hardware and delivered the full order to the job site.
• The build covers post footings and concrete, a ledger board attached to the house, drop beams, joists on framing hangers, decking boards, a perimeter railing, and one exterior staircase.

Designing Before the First Shovel

Rather than sketching a deck plan by hand, Chris runs the whole layout through Lowe’s Deck Designer, a desktop tool that turns basic dimensions into a 3D model of the finished structure. The software doesn’t stop at a picture — it spits out an itemized materials list and a cut plan, meaning every 2×8, joist hanger, and carriage bolt is already counted before anyone picks up a shovel. He then hands that printout to a Lowe’s location near the build site, and the store assembles the order and trucks it straight to the yard rather than making him load it himself.

That front-loaded planning matters for anyone considering the same project through DIY house and home channels: a miscounted joist hanger or an undersized beam discovered mid-build is the kind of mistake that stalls a weekend project into a two-week one. Getting the cut list right on paper first is the difference between a smooth pour day and a return trip to the store.

Footings, Ledger, and the Framing Sequence

The tutorial opens with the part most DIYers dread most: the foundation. Chris lays out the post footing locations, digs and pours the concrete, and sets metal post bases into the wet mix so the support posts never sit directly on bare concrete — a detail that protects the wood from rot at the point where it matters most. From there he attaches the ledger board to the house foundation, which is the structural anchor point tying the whole deck back to the home.

With the ledger set, he levels and secures the drop beams across the posts, then installs the joists using structural framing hangers rather than simply nailing them in place — a stronger, code-friendlier connection that spreads the load properly. Anyone who’s tackled interior structural work, like the process covered in How To: Removing a Load Bearing Wall!, will recognize the same instinct here: get the load path right before anything decorative goes on top.

Lay out the post footings, pour the concrete, set the post bases — everything after that is just building on a foundation that’s already square.

Decking, Railing, and Stairs

Once the frame is square and fastened, the video moves to the visible half of the project: fastening the deck boards across the joists, then building a basic wooden safety railing around the perimeter. Chris caps the build with a single exterior staircase connecting the deck surface down to the yard, completing the structure as a fully usable outdoor space rather than a raised platform with no way off it.

It’s a build sequence that echoes other ground-up outdoor projects in the same DIY space, including the concrete groundwork detailed in How to Make a Concrete Curb for a Fence — footings and concrete curing time show up again and again as the part beginners underestimate and the part that determines whether everything built on top of it holds up.

What makes the video useful as a reference rather than just entertainment is that Chris treats the Lowe’s-supplied cut list as the backbone of the whole shoot — every framing decision on camera traces back to that original 3D design and materials printout, so a viewer following along at home isn’t just watching a deck get built, they’re watching a specific, repeatable plan get executed step by step.