This 60-Foot Party Dock Will Blow Your Mind! | Lake Docks and Decks S1

0:01 On lake docks and decks, the Smith family has a dock that's been neglected for 20 years. This is what the dock is sitting on. Oh my god. They want to be able to party at the waterfront, but right now they can barely even walk on it. Jesus. Okay. I'm going to create a deck and dock perfect for relaxing and entertaining and make their dream project come to life. This is amazing. Holy smokes. [Music] I'm Marshall Black and I've been living and working on these lakes for more than 10 years building decks and docks. Today I'm heading to the Smith's Cabin

0:48 on a spectacular 2acre private island. They've spent decades here putting down roots and making memories. But in all that time, they've never updated their dock. And Steve has decided that it's finally time to create a luxurious space on the lake where he and his kids can relax and enjoy the water. We bought this island 20 years ago this year. My wife grew up north of here. When we got together, I fell in love with it and soon after that, we decided to find a place of our own. After my wife passed 5 years ago, um I felt that it was more important for us to come up here as a family. This place is intertwined with so many memories of her and and gives us comfort, I think. And if anyone asks what your favorite

1:33 place is, it's always here, no matter where. This is always the best place to come back to. The dock area at the moment really isn't something that is working for us. It's really rotting. It's showing its age. If there's four people laying on the lounge chairs reading and a boat comes into dock, you are pretty much juggling from falling into the lake or the lounge chairs trying to catch the boat coming in. I've dropped an iPod in there before and it was heartbreaking. So, I can't have that happen again. We're really just trying to create a wonderful family atmosphere up here for them so that they can have that for the rest of their lives. Lucky kids. Good lord. Listen to me. I got to know the Smiths a few years ago

2:19 when Kathy hired me to build her dream deck for Steven's wife Kathy. It was really important to have her own little section of the deck that she's saying this is this is my part of the deck. This is this is going to be called Kathy's corner. We started the build in the spring and she never actually got to the point where she could see the deck that we had designed together. This deck means a lot to me. It means a lot to the family. Now it's time to demolish the ram shackle rotten collection of ramps and platforms and build a brand new resort-like dock space for the Smiths. Well, Marshall, the Here's the dock. We haven't done anything with it for 20 years since we bought the place. You're kidding. No, it looks brand new.

3:04 We've done Thanks, bud. Uh we've done a few cosmetic changes here and there, but it's really starting to show its age. I really like this tripping hazard here. How many bags of groceries have ended up on the dock here because of that thing? Well, there's been a few. And this uh gas shed, which is a bit of an eyesore. I really don't want it there. And it disrupts the flow of traffic to the point over there. You want to keep it though, obviously. I do. You just want to relocate it. We could stick it over there, over there. I don't know. Just somewhere not in the in the way. When we're all done here, like how do you how do you want to use this place? How do you want it to feel when you're hanging out here? when our friends and family come over to sit down here and be able to have a sauna and then afterwards just have a you know have a glass of wine or something to sit and chat and just enjoy the day. It would be ideal. Frankly, it'd be great. I want to create a space for you that

3:51 just feels like a a resort. You're getting away from it all. You can come here and do everything that you want to do or nothing. Beautiful. That'd be that'd be fantastic, Marshall. Well, I'm going to make it happen. Okay. It's awesome. [Music] I'm going to create the ultimate party space for the Smiths by fully replacing the dock that's there now and adding two large floating docks so there's plenty of room for entertaining. I'll improve the access to the sauna as well as adding speakers and a rack for kayaks. Plus an outdoor kitchen and bar so they can stay by the water all day and night. [Music] It's a huge job and we're going to pull

4:37 it off in 3 weeks with a $75,000 budget. But before we can start building, we need to start from scratch. It's demolition time. We're taking this whole thing apart. You guys can have fun just demo. Demo. One of the nice things about these old docks, though, in my experience, and I'm sure in this one especially, is that there's going to be treasure under there. Steven's been tripping over this thing for 20 years. Pockets flying out. Change everywhere. I have a feeling there's treasure under there. [Music] Mouse nest. Sorry, buddy. You're losing your home.

5:26 No treasure yet. [Music] As we get down to the foundation, my crew discovers that the Smiths need this new dock even more than they realized. Wow. Look at that. This is the beam. This is what the dock is sitting on. Oh my god. Yeah. Nothing to it. Nothing left of it. It's an organic dock. It's now compost. This old floating dock can do double duty as a garbage barge. Now that it's time to get rid of this pile of scrap. And with a clean slate, it's finally time to start plotting out the Smith's party dock. So, we got our high water mark here. We also got some really nice rock sticking out of the water. So, we

6:14 can drill into this rock here, into that rock there, and we can put a beam right across here. Another beam back here. a beam out here on the crib to catch the end of our joist and then we can deck. So, X marks the spot. Let's drill. [Music] Mhm. Only perfect, guys. [Music] Beautiful. Let her set. All right, this looks like a nice flat spot. We can laminate the beam. Bit of an angle, but at least we'll have a straight beam. Oh, that's pretty

7:01 straight. We'll keep it. So, I'm just making a beam here. Four ply of 2x10. It'll be nice and thick and strong cuz I got a long span to go over top of the water. I don't want bounce in the beam or in the deck overall. So, nice big fat heavy duty beam. [Music] Want to mark out my 16s. [Music] This beam is going to be sturdy, but now we need to lug this 300lb beast into place. And then give it a little finesse so it fits into the saddle bracket we installed. [Music]

7:59 After we place our second beam, we can start laying in our joist. Then we'll be ready to put on the deck boards. But after a good night's sleep, I've taken another look. We did a lot of hard work to install these heavy beams, but something's not right. So, what it means is I have to undo some of the work I've done. I'm all about the end product, and as it is now, it it just doesn't sit right with me. So, I got to change it. The Smith's Island cabin has a massive network of docks that's falling apart. It's ugly and dangerous, and the smiths are lucky no one has fallen through the rotten boards. I demolished that eyesore, and now I'm building them a huge new dock big enough to host

8:46 parties. But as soon as I laid in the main beams, I realized that I'd missed an opportunity to add a kayak ramp. With only 3 weeks to complete this huge project, this change is going to set us back. So, originally I had this beam out here thinking more deck is better, but now I'm thinking that might just be a little bit too boring and not quite what they need to utilize this property as best as possible. I'm going to reposition this beam. Bring it over to here somewhere, which still gives me a lot of decking to go in here. It's beautiful natural passage to come kayaking up and pull up. I think the cool factor definitely outweighs the square footage in this case.

9:34 Now that we've finally got the right shape to this dock, we've started laying in the joist. Building on a rocky terrain means that we have to custom cut each joist to fit into this irregular landscape. Well, this is a tricky part. You got to scribe each joist into the rock and make sure that they're level with the other joist. So, it's pretty finicky thing, time consuming, but it's really the only way to do it, and it's well worth it in the end. [Music] Getting close.

10:21 Nailed it. We'll put some blocking in here and then this section's done. We can start decking. We're going to use cedar deck boards for this project. Cedar has natural oils that help it stand up to water and rot. So, we got our lift of of cedar decking here for Steven's project. We got a lot of the framing done scribed into the rock. Trying to keep this as low as possible. One of the hardships obviously when you're removing an old dock system, you're taking away your flat working surface. Last few days we've just been up to our knees in water. So now that we've got the basic framing structure of the dock done, we're going to lay out as many boards as we can just to give ourselves a nice surface. We can work, we can store, and uh we can keep on

11:09 going. Only a couple hundred more boards to go, Rob. Perfect. Things are moving along quite well here. Got a lot of progress. Um, got our stairs in here now down to the new dock level. Uh, went 8 ft wide, nice and wide, easy flow of the property. The old ramp coming down here right down to there was very steep. So, it's not as steep now. It's coming down to a nice flat landing as well, which walkways over here to a new set of stairs going to the sauna. The dock is done. The

11:55 shape is done. It's a little bit different than what I had planned originally, but in the end, we got tons of space here for living space. Thinking party central here. the new angle that I ended up creating over here. It's left me a little space here for a nice ramp down. They can pull their kayaks up over here. I'm going to build a kayak rack. Nice location for it. Easy flow. So, I ended up scribing around this upcrop of rock here. It's pretty cool. It also helps segregate the uh dock section up. So, I'm thinking this is where I'm going to put the outdoor kitchen for uh Steven. The Smiths want to entertain guests right here at the W's Edge. So, I've ordered something special for them that

12:40 I think they're going to love. Well, we're just getting prepared to uh build the outdoor kitchen area here. So, there's a lot of assembly to do, but this system is made for living outdoors. It's not going to rust and it's going to weather. It's not going to warp. It's going to be great. Nice. I think I'm going to have the barbecue on the angle here. So, this would be the first cabinet here. Here's the garbage. And look at this. Sweet paper towel rack. Yeah, I think this works. There's lots of room back here. Oh, plenty. Move around. Flip burgers. This is going to save a lot of trips up and down that

13:26 ramp cooking down here. Oh, it's great. After working on a kayak rack for Steve, it's time to put the finishing touches on the outdoor kitchen. [Music] All right, let's put this rock puzzle together. Uh, want to start on the bottom or the top? That's where I'd like to start, but Yep. Push. That looks really long cuz the three foot's on the canal labor. That's not good.

14:11 [Music] Yep. It's the way it should go. And look at this. See this nice clean line here? They butt together perfect. We got a flamed edge against a cut edge. This has to be ready for Stephen. The whole family's coming up this weekend. And it's got to be perfect. And this has thrown a real wrench into that happening. The Smiths dream of lounging, eating, and dancing by their waterfront. I'm building them a huge new dock that includes an outdoor kitchen, but I discovered that the stone countertop wasn't cut correctly. I've ordered a replacement countertop, and in the meantime, I need to replace their floating docks.

14:56 I lost time at the start of this project when I changed the design of the dock. So, I'm going to get back on schedule by having the Smith's floating docks built by one of my suppliers. It frees me up, frees my time up to focus on the land portion of the build. And I know that these guys, you know, this is what they do. They build floating docks. Rob knows everything there is to know about floating docks. He's been building them for decades. How high is the deck off the water? It's probably about 16 in off the water. Off the water. Let's say an 8 by8 aluminum ramp to your 10x 20 or 12x 20 or whatever you want, floating docks, not a problem. We We can provide. Best advice I can give you as a dock builder

15:43 is whatever dock you buy is keeping your wood and hardware out of the water. It's just maintenancefree. Well, I'm pretty sure Stephven's looking forward to maintenancefree because all he has now is rot and rust. So, hey, you're getting a good width. With a floating dock, you always get movement. And with a 6 foot wide, you get a lot of movement. With 8 foot wide, you get a little bit of movement. With 10 foot wide, it's a deck on the water. It's very stable. These docks are great. I love them. Um, so basically what I need is I'm looking for I guess two 10 by 20s or 12 by 20s. Okay. With uh 8 by eight ramps. Yep. And the whole system is just nice and stable. Yes, absolutely. It'll it'll work out beautifully at 10 ft. Beautifully stable. Okay. Awesome. The wonderful thing with outsourcing

16:29 part of a project, you don't have to build it yourself. Like magic, the Smith's new floating docks are here and ready to be installed. Well, this was easy. I connected the ramps up earlier, which is great. They have these individual floaters on them, which uh helps support uh the ramp and also helps uh level out the dock here, so it's not sinking down at one end all the time from the weight of the ramp itself. This is great. Stephen will be able to do this himself, or he can invite me over for a barbecue and get a hand helping hand. I'm relieved to have the docks installed, but there's still a ton of

17:14 details to take care of before Steve arrives. We've only got one more day, and I need to make sure that everything is perfect by the time Steve gets here. This is amazing. Holy smokes, this is fantastic. We're almost done building the Smith's new dock, and I'm thrilled with the way it's turned out. After the stone countertop for their outdoor kitchen was cut wrong, the one thing that worried me was getting it replaced. But it got here right on time. So, I'm going to install this top and take care of a few last minute details before I show Steve how I've transformed his waterfront in just 3 weeks and with a budget of $75,000.

17:59 This is amazing. Holy smokes. [Music] This is fantastic. Look how wide it is. Yeah. Nice and stable. Remember where the other one was? It's terrible. A diving board. We got you a diving board. Oh, you're such a great guy. Thank you for that. That's awesome. So, we got rid of the the storage shed/ dog house. Yeah. But I wanted to make sure that you had storage left here. So, I've incorporated into your already existing sauna and just repurposed the the deck that was already there. So, it's out of the way, but it's still fully accessible. That's awesome. And you've just incorporated right into the rock down there. Look at that. Right in scribed it into the rock. So, you just kind of come up here, stand on the rocks, open one of these.

18:44 Oh, fantastic. Whatever you want to put in here, your gas tanks, towels, pool noodles. That's great. So, check this out. Brand new stairs. Wide. Lots of people can be coming up and going down, carrying your groceries up to a level platform. Fantastic. I did uh re-angle your your ramp that was existing before. Retopped it, but it's also it's not as steep as it was. It was a little steep before. It was a little steep. And look at the flow right all the way from the dock right up to there. Looks great. And the new flow for the sauna. So you can come down here up the stairs to the sauna down those stairs off the diving. Boom into the water. So much fun with that. Look around the side here. So, you can come down those stairs. I made a little bit of a a walkway so you can come around back and

19:31 easily access your wood burning fireplace in the back. Look at the size of this dock. No, this is great. This has got to be 60 ft. This is huge. It's massive. This is great. I love it. And look at this bar. This I know you wanted a fridge down here. I Well, how about an entire outdoor kitchen? How about it? But look at this. So, we've got a fridge here. Oh, look at this. Look at this. You put all your fantastic food in there, drinks in there. Got the barbecue. That's a serious Oh, with a rotisserie and a rotisser back warmer. This is that's the Cadillac barbecue. Really lovely. And of course, the hammock. This is This is something else. So, we did a lot of clearing out here and rocks. A lot of rocks out of here and

20:16 trees. Somewhere for you to hang. Now, do you think you can reach the barbecue from the hammock? That's the question. Let me think. I'll work on it. You've done something here. How does this work? Well, originally I had the dock was way out there over to that rock, but there wasn't a good way to to then get your your kayaks and your canoes up here. So, I actually I changed the whole shape of the dock, brought it back here, made access to this channel, and I put in an adjustable kayak or canoe ramp. So, you can adjust it down so it's always right down at the water level, and you can just pull right on up and down. goes up and down. That's fantastic. The water level float right into the uh easy in, easy out. Oh, wow. And then kind of created a little area here to to build a kayak rack.

21:03 This is great. So, it's right in and store or grab and go. And I know the girls, they really wanted some music down here, and you were saying, "Oh, maybe some speakers hidden on some rocks." So, what I ended up getting you is speakers that look like rocks. Get out. Tell me if you can see it. it back here. Yeah, there's two of them. No. Yeah. Um, no, I can't see them. Perfect. But you'll be able to hear them. Okay, here's my impression of Steven discovering the place. That's the reaction you want. That's the reaction I got. And it's incredible. I really really feel that I picked the right man for this job because he's created a space for us, not just for my

21:49 family, but for future generations of our family. And they won't know what he did, but we do. And it means so much to us.