An existing three story brick masonry apartment building that had been converted to condominiums in the 1980’s set in an L shaped footprint contained dilapidated and structurally unsound wooden decks (3 stories high) at the rear of the building nestled into the inside corner of the L shape. “I never feel safe when I walk up these stairs or stand on the upper sections of this deck structure” Jim Connolly Property Manager for Port Property Services. Existing footings and all deck components were rendered unusable within current building codes and were thus removed entirely. A tricky component of the project was that one section of the existing decks were actually utilized as a second means of egress, but the stairs of the deck were integrated into the framing making the actual deck space very limited. RMX Northeast, Inc. re-designed the layout of the new decks such that all three rear units attained almost equal and larger sized deck areas while relocating the integrated stair framing into another section of the layout.
Ultimately, the unit owners were extremely delighted by the more user friendly layout and how much safer they felt on their new decks.