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Deck boards: would you fix the squeak or tear it all up?
Stopped by my cousin's place in Akron last Saturday to help him look at his 12 year old deck. He's got maybe 300 square feet of cedar that's seen better days. Some boards are warped, a few nails popped up, and this one section near the steps squeaks so loud you'd think it's haunted. I told him he could pull up the bad boards and replace maybe 15% of them for under $200 in materials, and he could get two more years out of it easy. But he's leaning toward ripping the whole thing down and starting fresh with composite, which he priced around $4,500 with labor if he hires it out. I get that new looks great and zero maintenance, but it kills me to scrap cedar that's mostly solid. He argued that patching means mixing old and new wood, different weathering, and he'll be back at it in a couple years anyway. So who's right here? When do you draw the line between band-aiding a deck versus full replacement? If you've tackled a similar call, what pushed you one way or the other?
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jordan3304d ago
Squeaky cedar is just the deck crying about your cousin's plan to replace it with plastic.
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