High Standard.

By Wendy A. Jordan, Senior Contributing Editor

An elevated deck raises outdoor living to the standard of this remodeled house

Over the past decade, the owners upgraded this 22-year-old Atlanta house section by section, transforming it into a stylish, comfortable home and a gracious place for entertaining - at least on the inside. Out back the unsightly deck languished, gradually deteriorating. A couple of years ago the homeowner turned her attention to that deck.

'It was dilapidated,' she says, and 'we were concerned that it was becoming unsafe.' The time had come to bring the outdoor living area up to the standard of the rest of the house.

Architect and custom outdoor living specialist Rick Goldstein, co-owner of Mosaic Group, a full-service design-build firm in Atlanta, sees this pattern often.

'If a deck misses several maintenance cycles and appears beyond repair, people tend to stop maintaining it,' he says. 'Then, when it looks awful, they decide that it has to be completely redone.'

The owners of this house asked Goldstein to design a new deck and reinvent the entire back-of-house environment. The request came not a moment too soon.