How to Build a Mini Deck with Trex Decking

If you have a hose reel that you want to place in the middle of your rock garden, you might be wondering how to create a stable and attractive base for it. One option is to build a mini deck out of scrap Trex composite decking, which is a durable and low-maintenance material that can withstand outdoor elements. In this blog post, I will show you how I built a mini deck for my hose reel using some leftover Trex boards and a few tools.

All the files for this build are at the bottom of the post!

YouTube Video

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Tools and Materials

These are the tools I personally use or the new version of the tool. Other brands should work fine as long as they are the same type of tool and not under sized.

Tools

• Impact Driver
• Impact Driver Bits
• Drill
• Drill Bits
• Miter Saw
  • or
• Circular Saw
• Router
• Router Table
• Slot Cutting Bit

Materials

• 3, 2 x 4 Pressure Treated Lumber
• 1, 16 ft Squared Trex Decking
• 3″ Deck Screws
• Trex Hidden Fastners
• FastenMaster TrapEase 3 Composite Deck Screws

Mini Deck Building Process

The first step is to measure the size of your hose reel and decide how big you want your mini deck to be. I wanted my mini deck to be slightly larger than my hose reel and easy to build, After playing around in Shapr3d, I found ideal size of the decking to be 28.5 inches by 28.5 inches. Odd number I know, but it makes all of the cuts easier.

Once you determine the size of your Mini Deck you have to double check to make sure you have enough scrap decking laying around. Then you can start breaking down the materials.

Mini Deck Headers and Joists

I cut 2, header boards out of 2×4 pressure treated material at 26 inches long. You should/need to use pressure treated lumber for the base because this will be sitting on the ground outside.

Then I cut 7 joists out of the pressure treated lumber at 23 inches long. Because the ends of the middle decking and the side of 2 of the picture frame boards needs some where to land. I doubled Joists 2 &3 and 5 &6. You’ll see what i mean during the dry assembly.

Mini Deck Trex Decking

After breaking down the pressure treated lumber, I moved on to breaking down the composite decking. I’m using left over Trex Enhance Rocky Harbor decking. The Enhance Line is now the entry level tier of their good, better, best model and so far after 3 years it’s held up well.

I cut 3 boards at 17 inches long to make the middle section boards.

Then I broke down my decking boards into 4 boards at 28.5 inches long. Then I added 45-degree miters to each corner. The downside to composite decking is that it can warp on you so it’s not flat. this makes mitered corners difficult. To make sure I didn’t waste materials I snuck up on the 45-degree miters by cutting off thin wafers on each pass until I got up to the perfect 45-degree miter.

The next step is to assemble the frame of your mini deck. You can get very specific and detailed here if you want, but if you’re following the plan this can be very easy.

Mini Deck Assembly

Place your Headers at the top and bottom of your work surface. Then place 1 joist on each side. After that use your middle joist as a spacer block in-between the outer joists and the doubled joists on each side then take the last joist and put it in the middle. Once the layout is good predrill and screw it together with 3 inch deck screws.

You should have something that looks similar to this.

After the frame is assembled you get to do the same process again but with your deck boards. If you are using non-grooved boards and hidden fasteners. You’ll need a router and slot cutting bit to cut the slot into the Trex boards. I’m using a mix of hidden fasteners and color matched screws on this project.

Only add slots to the inside sides of the Trex decking. Here is my dry fit lay out.

You can see the screws for the hidden fasteners sticking out.

The last step before we can install this Mini Deck is to add the color matching screws on the outside of the Picture frame.

I predrilled the holes before screwing them down to keep the screw pattern the same. But with these TrapEase3 color matching screws you can’t see the screws unless you’re looking for them.

Mini Deck installation

Now that the Mini Deck is finished we can install it in our rock garden. I have pictures with and without the hose reel on it. Enjoy!

And that’s it! You have just built a mini deck for your hose reel using scrap Trex composite decking. This project was easy, cheap, and fun, and it gave me a way to use up some leftover materials. I hope you enjoyed this blog post and found it helpful. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.