The garden upper decking sits on top of the single-storey extension foundation slab — which sounds straightforward until you discover that the slab isn't level. Not even close. The previous owners had simply laid the old decking on top and hoped for the best. By the time I pulled it up in 2021, it was rotten through and the slope beneath it was more pronounced than anything I'd anticipated.

Getting a truly level platform on an uneven base meant rethinking the approach. Rather than packing up the joists with shims and hoping they'd hold, I installed adjustable self-levelling plinths — a cleaner, more engineered solution that lets each support point be set independently to the correct height. Once the framework was level, the boards went down properly and the finished deck sat solid and square.

It's one of those projects where most of the work is invisible in the final result. But that's exactly how it should be.