Well after the construction spread over about 18 days, we have our new deck. Being that our most frequent special use is eating breakfast while enjoying viewing the pond across the south lawn, my wife immediately placed the breakfast table and chairs in the appropriate location on the southwest corner of the deck.
The long side of the deck is on the west side of the house, and the astute observer will note that counting the columns from left to right columns 2 & 3 are signifantly more stout than their fellows. The explanation is that one of the priorty upgrades was to place those columns with a 10 foot spacing rather than the former 8 foot spacing. These two columns stand astride the 8 foot double door into the basement. Getting vehicles into the basement where the welding and machining facilities reside could be a bit dicey and the tractor roll bar hit the knee brace more than once. With the increased 10 foot span the posts were upsized from 4x4 to 6x6 and the knee braces at the top were made a bit longer as well. The beam spanning the 10 foot spacing was increased from a single 2x6 to a double and a corresponding increase in the knee braces at each end were upsized a bit more than all the others.

The knee braces at the top of the posts are another upgrade feature as well. The original deck was built with a single angled piece of wood on each side of the column on each side of the post secured by a single nail through the thin end of the brace. While it may have been adequate when b uilt it did not endure aging well at all. The wood would split around the nail and only friction between the brace at the beam and column really gave any reliable force transmission and the brace ended up being ill fitting at the ends. Not the sort of thing to inspire confidence, that the posts merely sat on the concrete at the bottom end with no fasteners whatsoever did not exactly inspire confidence. I hammered the bottom of the post and the fasteners in the braces on numerous occasions to put them back in position. The sister "sister braces are screwed together to make an effective 4x4 or 4x6 brace and the brace is held in place at each end by at least one of the sister braces laping ontothe side of the post and being secured by multiple screws. Any loading that would skew the post left or right is resisted both byscrews in shear and the brace butting against at its ends. (I believe that this brace arrangement is described in workmans language as , "HELL FOR STOUT"
Also all the posts are secured at their lower end by Metal timber joiners screwed to the concrete or b) embedment in the concrete or c) attachment along their length by studs embedded in the concrete retaining walls.
The available space is slightly better but about the same as the original deck, and the railings exceed minimum code required height but the new railings are a few inches lower, as the original top rail was at just the height that when sitting at the breakfast table the railing obscured my view of the pond. Eliminating that problem was a specification requirement that I imposed

Now I can watch the ducks, and geese as the placidly paddle across the water leading their ducklings and goslings in a line behind them.
I now can assert that the new deck is stronger than the old one ever was and way stronger than the old deck had become.
There is still room for a moderate size hot tub on the deck should that idea ever strike me. not to mention a moderate size barbecue (so long as it is strategically placed away from the vinyl siding and the doors from the house to the deck are immediately adjacent to a bathroom both upstairs and down plus lighting and a GFCI outlet both upstairs and down.
As for my part since the theme of this strip has been "What have you done 'Naturally' Lately, Most of the work was done by the contractor and a crew of 1 to 5 workmen but I was in attendance to clarify matters that came up from time to time about how details were to be handled, and I also served as the receiving clerk when shipments from the lumber yard arrived and had to be inventoried and signed for when the workmen were not present as well as an advisor about existing house structure do to my knowledge about other recent remodeling. Alas the aspect of doing things "in a naturist" manner was limited despite the fact that the weather was both hot and humid as the crew was strongly "conventional fundamentalist"

But I did participate to a degree that was real work given the heat. And certain tasks (e.g. keeping the site mowed and tidied up for safe and efficient work were acomplished "naturistically" when the crew was not present

I never met anyone that I could not learn something from.