Multi-Level Decks in Fort Thomas, KY

Fort Thomas (ZIP 41075) was platted as a streetcar suburb, so the lots are slim and the side setbacks fix how wide anything at the back can be. A deck here grows in one direction only, which means the ones that get built tend to be long and narrow, and that shape has a problem nothing in the specification fixes.

A deck twelve feet wide and thirty long is a corridor. Everything on it is in a line, everybody walks past everybody, and the far end is somewhere people go rather than somewhere they sit. Furniture does not solve it, because furniture in a narrow space just makes the route narrower. Screens and planters make it feel smaller still. The proportion is the problem and the proportion cannot be changed, because the setbacks decided it.

A change of height solves what width cannot. Two platforms with a step between them read as two places instead of one long one, and the eye stops at the level change the way it would stop at a doorway. It also gives you a natural edge to sit on where the upper level meets the lower, which recovers seating from a deck too narrow to put a bench on. On a lot this shape the second level is doing something a wider deck would never need it for, and it is worth saying that the fall of the ground barely comes into it. We set the levels off the length rather than off the slope.