Years ago, I was planning a backyard room addition
for a client. The addition was planned for the space
occupied by an existing deck, and it seemed like a
waste to demolish a perfectly good deck and tear up the
yard excavating and pouring concrete. The customer
owned a 2,000-sq. ft. condo in Florida that was built
10 feet off the ground on pressuretreated
posts set in concrete. He
thought he should be able to build a
room addition in Illinois the same
way, only two feet off the ground.
So I asked my local code official if
we could build the room addition
right on top of the existing deck. It
took him