Episode 20: Decks 101 (Permits, Materials & Building It Right)
Welcome back to How to Handyma'am, the podcast where we like big decks and we cannot lie!
In this episode, we are wrapping up our spring series by talking all about decks. Whether you are planning to build a new deck yourself or you just want to know what to look for when you hire a contractor, we are taking you through the process from the ground up!
This episode is dedicated to Samantha's sister, Phyllis, who is incredibly smart, supportive, and always shows up for her family!
We kick things off with our "3 Minutes of Chaos" segment, where Samantha reviews the book/audiobook combo of Project Hail Mary, Arly explains her silent war against gambling (and learning to deal blackjack), and Emily recounts the ultimate overstimulating experience of sitting in a loud, smoky casino while watching someone violently crush and suck the meat out of crab legs.
Now, let's get into our Deck 101 True or False Showdown!
True or False: Deck Building Basics
1. "I’m just building a deck in my own backyard, so I don’t need to involve the city or call anyone before I start."
FALSE! You absolutely need a permit if your deck is attached to your house, if it is over 200 square feet, or if it is elevated off the ground. If you build without a permit, your city can force you to rip the entire deck out!
2. "I'm just ripping the boards off my deck and replacing them. That's all I'm doing. I have to call Miss Dig (811)."
FALSE! If you are simply resurfacing your deck and not doing any digging, you do not need to call the utility marking service. However, if you are digging footers, you must call!
3. "As long as you use thick wood, it doesn't matter how far apart the joist boards underneath the deck are."
FALSE! There are strict building codes for joist spans. The standard spacing for deck joists is 16 inches on center. While older composite materials required 12-inch spacing, modern composite boards are now rated for standard 16-inch spacing!
4. "I can stain my pressure-treated deck the weekend I install it."
FALSE! Pressure-treated lumber is soaked in chemical vats, making it incredibly wet and heavy. You have to wait 6 to 12 months for the wood to dry out completely before you can stain it.
5. "Cedar is more expensive than pressure-treated wood, and it warps less."
TRUE! Cedar is beautiful, naturally antifungal, and comes dry from the store, so you can stain it immediately and it warps far less than pressure-treated wood. The Catch: It is very soft and scratches easily (especially with big dogs), and the dust is toxic, so you must wear a mask when cutting it!
6. "Composite decking can get hot underfoot."
TRUE! Composite decking gets incredibly hot in the sun compared to natural wood. If you are investing in composite, look for premium lines (like TimberTech) that feature "Cool Touch" technology to keep the boards from burning your bare feet!
Deck 101: Key Takeaways
Substructure Rules: Every piece of wood touching the ground MUST be rated for "Ground Contact" (GC). If your deck is attached to your house, the concrete footers must be dug below the frost line (which is 42 inches deep in Michigan) so the deck doesn't heave up and down in the winter and destroy your home's siding.
Composite Fasteners: Never let a contractor drive standard yellow wood screws straight through composite decking! They must use hidden fastener clips, color-matched composite screws, or countersunk screws with matching composite plugs.
The Simpson Strong-Tie Rule: Stop struggling with old-fashioned joist hanger nails! Invest in Simpson Strong-Tie products and use their specific structural hex-head screws. They are stronger, and they allow you to easily back the screws out if you make a mistake during installation.
Railings Will Cause a Divorce: If you are DIY-ing your deck, we highly recommend hiring out the railings—especially if they are vinyl or aluminum. They are incredibly tedious and precise, and they will test the limits of your marriage!
If you loved this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform! Share your deck projects with us by tagging @howtohandymaam on Instagram, or send us an email at hthm@myhandymaam.com!
Episode Transcript:
Welcome back. Welcome, welcome. For the first time. If this is your first time, yeah, this is your first. Welcome to the table, Welcome to the party. Hmm, come on in. Welcome to How to Handyman, the podcast where we like big decks and we cannot lie. In this episode, we start with three minutes of chaos. It's about 9 minutes chaos, but we're not going to talk about that. And then we get right into it. This is a little bit of a shorter episode today, but we are talking about decks. We're starting from the ground, literally calling Miss Digg and all the way up to your railings. So stick around to listen all about your decks and this is how to handy ma'am and I'm Emily. I'm early. And I'm Samantha, and this episode is dedicated to my sister, Phyllis. Those of you who don't know me might not know I have a lot of sisters and. They are. Pretty fantastic. And my sister Phyllis is a pretty remarkable human being. She is incredibly smart. She's had this amazing career. So she's somebody who I'm always like, oh, if she thinks I'm doing a good job, then I know I'm doing a good job. And she's been really supportive of what we've done. And she's somebody that shows up for her family, like shows up for her family. And I really respect that and love that and appreciate that about her. And yeah, she's also incredibly fun. We laugh like, a ridiculous amount when we're together, which you need people who you belly laugh with. So this is dedicated to you, Phyllis. I'm glad you're my sister and I love you. Thanks, Phyllis. Let's get into the episode. Let's do it. Are you guys ready for three minutes of chaos? I know I. Just watched that, yeah. It's like a loose framework of chaos, so 3 minutes give or take whatever. Time is relative anyways. Honestly, like it's the concept, OK. All right, so I am going to share something quirky about myself so other people who have quirky things about themselves can be like, OK, we're all being quirky together. I'm excited. About this because sorry, there's many quirky things. About you, yeah. That's when will. You choose. So we talked about in the last episode, but I really love Project Hail Mary. Yeah, I think that's what it's called, the movie. It's really fantastic. And I was like, I really want to know more. And, you know, the books always have more. So I went on to Kindle and I got the book, which is great. But then like sometimes I can't read it because I'm doing things like this morning I was trying to get ready and read it at the same time. Read it, yes. So I was like, so I went on Audible and I also got the audio book. And if you have Kindle and audio, Audible, Audible, they're both owned by Amazon. So which, yeah, we'll talk about that side. That's a side quest. But anyway, they're both owned by Amazon and they work together. So I read the book and then I got the audio book and I turned it on and it said starting from where you were. And it goes to where I was in the book. And then I listen, listen, listen. And then I had a little bit of time earlier and I went, so I opened up the book to the one to read and it took me to where I was in the audio book. So I know it's crazy that I bought the book twice, but it may for someone has to like, do stuff all the time. It's like if I have a little bit of time in the doctor's office, I can't listen. So I can read. And then if I'm getting ready or doing any number of a million other things, then I can listen instead of reading and I don't have to find my spot. That's really nice. One of the most ridiculous things I've ever thought is as I was listening to an audio book, I was like, I really wish I had subtitles to this. That's just called a book. Yeah. Not quite sure what was going on with my head that day, but it was not good. Are you ready or do you want me to go? I'm ready. Are you? Ready. You want to start your own? I know you like starting your own. Arley has a weird obsession with starting her own timer. I feel fun OK go go. So yesterday, so today Jace is going to casino with one of his friends slash family friend or whatever and. She's her boyfriend. Yes, Jace is my boyfriend and he wants to play blackjack because I guess the odds are like the best. They have the best odds and so he asked if I would be like the dealer and normally so I have this. Was he practicing, you mean? Yes, OK, yes, I have a a silent war against gambling and don't come at me and a lot of people have a lot of fun doing it and that's great, but I hate gambling with a burning passion. So anyway, I was like, I don't think so. But then when he asked me to be the dealer, I was like, I was like, this gives me some kind of power. OK, so I I learned how to be the dealer and I was showing Jace how like good I am at shuffling because I'm very good at shuffling cards and anyway. We played just ignore the timer. It was actually really fun. I had very much fun. I don't understand how it would work, I guess with chips or betting or whatever, but that's not the part that I. I mean, gambling can, I don't find it to be fun because I'm like, if I'm going to lose 40 bucks, I'd rather lose it on popcorn in a movie. But other people enjoy the process. So it's like anything else. If you like have trouble with alcohol, you can't drink. If you have trouble with gambling, you can't gambling. We. Also get overstimulated, all three of us. Oh yeah, psychology knows. It's like overstimulating. Yeah, the thought of going inside. Of a casino. Oh gosh, did I ever tell you the story? I know I told you. I don't know if I ever told early. The ultimate overstimulation. I went to a casino with a former coworker. We are so not. We were on, we were on at a conference. So after we're like, let's go to the casino. We'll eat the famously delicious food, which is a total lie. But we we went to, we gambled for a little while. Like I lost my 5 bucks or whatever lemon I had set for myself. And then we went into a restaurant and she I was already like over stimulate and it they loud smoking. So that was just an extra layer. I told her I'm going to go sit in the restaurant like because at least there's a set of doors that are like Bing Bing, Bing Bing. So we go in and then she orders King Crab. Legs. Oh no. And I cannot tell you the quantity of lack of grace with which these crab legs were eaten. So I don't like seafood anyway. So I can smell it. But I'm like, I'm not going to be a jerk. People can eat seafood. You know, it's not for me to say I'm eating my like, mashed potatoes and meatloaf. She literally, she's like breaks them. So all I hear is. And then she throws them when she sucks the meat out, and then she throws them in the bucket they give you. Oh, yeah, exactly. So it was like crunch. And it just repeated and the smell and the noises and then the casino in the background. After a while, I was like, you know, I'm done eating. I'm just going to go like, wait in the parking lot for you. Don't don't worry about hurrying. Oh, my God. There's like. Like silent. I'm about to have like a complete like brains melting out of my. Ears OK for a while. Read like random. Noises for my one minute. Oops. OK, I want to talk about museums because I love them very much and I think. It's an understatement. People should be spending more time in museums and the key is do not try to do all of the museum. We went to the Met in December or NN and that museum is. Huge. I would need to go back to New York City just to spend like a few days going through the museum. So I am an avid museum map gal. I break out the map and I make game plan of like what I need to see. Like we did this at the Met. We saw the ancient Egyptian section, we saw the Roman section, the cool armor section, which was really cool. And then we ended in the impressionism section. Because like Van Gogh. We all, yeah, we all love Impressionism. So it's like kind of like, I don't know, I feel like people go to a lot of museums in the summer. So that's my #1 tip for museums as someone who has a mom who doesn't love museums. Yeah, I will explain to you the difference. OK, so there are different kinds of museum people. Emily is a performance clothing museum attendee. I am an old fashioned cotton museum attendee. So Emily can absorb and absorb and absorb and she just Wicks the knowledge away into the back of her brain and has room for more. I am old fashioned cotton. I am like 1985 cotton. After I have gone to like 3 rooms, I, I have soaked it in. I am now sweaty. I am like just dripping out of my ears. I cannot absorb anymore. I'm like, so you got to know what kind of museum attendee you are. I am impressed with you, but me, I'll be like, oh, I'm having a meltdown. We spent a week in DC and I saw your soul leave your body a few times. I get to a certain point and I'm. Like where I'm like taking me to the Oh my gosh, these museums are open late today. Let's go to 5. More Do you want to get up and go to a museum? I'm like, I did get up and vacation. I actually I got up an. Alarm and I left the hotel at 8:00 AM and I walked myself down to the National Mall and I just hit all the museums. I know that you didn't really want to hit and that's. I am. I delight in your enjoyment of museums, and I'm not. It's not that I don't. I get it. From my dad. My dad loves me. I just have a limit. Like I would not have wanted to miss the Holocaust Museum as horrible. As horrible. As that experience was, everybody needs to have that experience. And then the African American History Museum. That was so good I was bummed tan I missed out. On that was hoof. Support your museums, your local museums, many of them. It's like nothing to get in. Yeah, most. Of the Smithsonian museums are free. Yeah, because it's our national unbelievable brain. Trust that we get to have this information and it is very important. This is political, but this is an important political thing. It's very important that you support your local infrastructure like that, your museums, your libraries, things like that, because knowledge can actually go away and it can be taken away and use your power. Spend money at the museums. I love that lovely, lovely gift shop which is my favorite part. Of it I love a gift shop I love. A gift shop, that's why we get along too well. And then just the gift shop thing. But yeah, support your local museum. If you do have a local museum, you can get like a long term membership even if you're not going to go very often. It supports what the museum's doing. And that was our very long 3. Minutes. That was 9 minutes and 30 seconds of chaos. It was football minutes of chaos. It was 3 minutes of chaos for each of. Us so it's so it's kind of a sort of and I like. Tell you what kind of museum goer I am. I love museums. OK, I'm not, I'm not a paint girl, though. Like I love, I love art, but a lot of the art that is in museums, I just, I'm not affected by art in the same way that other people are. So I am almost uninterested in art museums. But anyway, I love like. History and like the Natural History Museum in Chicago. And like, science museums and stuff like that. Love them. The thing I hate with a burning passion is how many people are there. Yeah. And how many people bring their children there. And, like, if I was a parent, I would totally bring my kid to that. But as a person who goes without children and wants to just like Mosey around and like live in her own world while I read these things, people are like around you and also making noise and like it's so overwhelming when like really I just want like the content. Go in with noise cancelling headphones on. Yes, like over the. Year. That would be nice. My God I love when they have the self-guided audio apps and stuff. Oh yeah. I like that too. That up every time I'm like, yes, yeah. It's very hard for a family to stay together with. That that is hard. We just sort of somebody lingers. They don't even notice everybody. Yeah, gone. For half an. Hour I love going to museums by myself it's. Still fun, you really can wander wherever, however long sit. And stare at a painting because I am one of those art freaks who's like. Yeah, I love all of the information at museums that are not like just about the facts, but they'll tell you like, this is the person that discovered this and like little things, like fun things sometimes. Or did you know that they had to use this tool because of this and this and this? And I find that stuff so fascinating. So history is important, friends. Yes, it is. That's your 12 minutes of chaos now. Yes, many minutes of chaos. Sorry guys, but. You're it was all great. Let's just. Consider that also our banter section. Tales from the field. My brief 1 is I saw Rd. something become roadkill when I was driving this week to estimates and I just have to share that drama is very. Trauma. Thank you for sharing that trauma. Yes. Thank you. Told us right after and you were like, I have to tell you about this and you're like, why didn't you do it to us? And you were like, because I can't carry this. Way too. You have to cycle through trauma like at least those of us that are wired for verbal processing. You have to cycle through it, like repeatedly before the emotion that's tied to the story guys down. I used to wish I was like a mysterious and coy person who was like, oh, what's she got going on? Yeah. No, I'm a she invoke. And I've just accepted it. You know what I'm feeling based off my face. I say stuff all the time. You got. Yeah, you. Can't hide nothing. That's all three of us, hence the podcast One of us will walk. Into the room in the morning and we're like, are you OK? And they're like, no, we're like, we could, yeah. So a little lead up into what we're talking about today is so I do most of our estimates and this topic. I do a lot of estimates now. OK, sorry. We do most of our estimates and, and our estimates decks are something we estimate a lot and there's a lot that goes into planning a deck project, whether you are doing it DIY or you're having it done yourself. It's really hard to know. There's so many materials options, there's so many considerations like your property and things like that. And so we're talking about decks today. And this is for people who are going to either hire it or do it themselves. It's useful for. Both. Yes, I would say this. It is like a deck one O 1 level. OK, so I'm here, we're mainly going to be talking about materials. We're going to be playing a little bit of true and false. Sorry you don't have prizes. You can just have my internal aggregation. I just have to win, I don't have to have a prize. But yeah, that's what we're talking about today and I'm leading it. All right, let's do it so. I have a fun tip when we get to decking material. OK, so tap me in and hopefully I remember it. So we're going to go through a deck from a ground up. We're going to start with the permit process, and we're going to work our way up to railings Like, OK, love it, that's our road map. OK, so the game today is true or false? I like a good true or false true. I haven't done a true or false. Yet, and this is one of the things that Samantha and I are not equivalent in knowledge about because I feel like we overlap in a lot of different parts of information, but I am not on a lot of deck jobs and I don't do, I haven't done any of the permit processing. So OK, well, I'm ready. I'm ready to win. OK, true. Are we going back and forth? No you guys, it's just one word answers to say it at the same time. OK, OK true or false and you have to wait till I finish the sentence. OK, true or. False I'm just building a deck in my own backyard so I don't need to involve the city or call anyone before I start. False yes. False. Do you guys want to expand on that at all or? If you don't want to be required to RIP it out when you get found out, you should get a permit because ask us how we know. Not that we did, but we have been had knowledge of that happening people before and you might think it's in my backyard. They won't notice. You know what? Your nosy neighbor is going to report you, or which. This has actually happened. Somebody will see you taking lumber into your backyard and literally be like, I wonder if they have a permit and you know what? Their public record so your nosy neighbor can go find out if you pulled a permit and then pour you if you didn't. But also when you're working with your inspectors, which we have good relationships with our inspectors, the purpose of the inspection process is to make sure that it's safe. So it's to you. It's annoying sometimes, but it's to your benefit to have a permit so you need one. And sometimes you don't need a permit if it's not attached to your house I. Can tell you most places. You have to check most places. If it is not attached to your house and it is at ground level in less than 200 square feet. If those three things are true, at least in every Township and city that we work in, you do not need a permit. It's basically like you're building a platform on the ground. Do a little Google. Yeah, you as the homeowner are allowed to build decks on your own property as long as you follow the specifications. You know, what some people might not know too is that a lot of times when we pull permits for decks, we also have to get zoning approval. Yes, so and that and that also sucks if you build something that you're not allowed to have and they make you change. Yeah. And if you're ever planning on selling your house, that's when those things come up and then you get some trouble for it. But if you want to say, ask the government, do whatever you want. We do not recommend our business. Yeah, not our business, but. It'll be your business. But. If you are hiring someone to do your deck and they are kind of weird. Like we don't need to pull a permit. I would just Google it for yourself and just double check because it is important and it adds equity to your home when you do it. Properly, yeah, and. When you don't do it properly, probably as a headache for you or the person. Even if you're so, if you have a contractor that says no one's going to notice, what's going to happen is if somebody notices, you're the homeowner, you're the one that's going to be made to make it right. And in theory you would make your builder make it right for you. But you probably have an unlicensed builder, which is probably why they aren't pulling a permit and they're not going to make it right, so. I have one little thing. So what Samantha said about getting your stuff inspected is actually very important if you're doing it yourself, because there are a lot of little things that can, I mean, there are some things that are tedious and kind of annoying and like nitpicky that can be annoying sometimes. But if you want to really make sure that your deck is going to be safe and you do it the way that you're supposed to with getting inspections, you will know at the end of it that you did it correctly and it is safe, so. And think also last, because there is no inexpensive deck project. It does not matter if you do it yourself, it does not matter if you use all pressure treated wood. Every deck project is some version of expensive. So it's not just about safety, which is the most important, but you also want it to last. Yeah, it's an it's truly an investment. It really is, yeah. Yeah, it is. And speaking as people who really like to get good grades in school, it's kinda nice when the inspector's like, oh, you did a good job. You did a good job. We like that. OK, true or false? I'm ripping the boards off of my deck and replacing them. That's all I'm doing. OK, I have to call Miss Digg. False. True, true. It's false. I am correct, you are. Correct. Oh, I forgot I was. Supposed to say it's. But early. Somewhere, but 811 is mistake. Yes, 811. If you are just replacing your deck boards and you're not doing any digging, you do not have to call mistake. But if you are digging for a fence, you are digging for anything, even like very shallow call mistake it's free to have done because the government does not want to take care of whatever you just hit. Underground and you don't want to. It can be really expensive and you should know that if you call Miss Digg and they mark something, you're like now I can't put a fence there. That's not true. It just means there will be areas you have to hand dig. You can't put an auger in the ground because you hand dig. You know you're going to hit something. Usually, unless you're like Herculean, you're going to hit it and hear it before you break it, so. It's very true, OK. Oh my gosh, The weirdest thing that's ever happened to me when I put an auger in the ground is that the auger brought up the scraps of the blanket that the homeowner's pet had been buried in like 15 years ago. Like it was a long time, but it was like it was a blanket that was woven, so it just brought up individual shrimp. Do you remember when we were digging for that handrail and we found an entire pack of shingles? Oh yeah. And we couldn't make a giant hole, so we literally had to dig a hole through a pack of shingles. Yeah, we have found something. Between it was between a fresh concrete and a very large Bush and we couldn't get. Through a relatively new build. It was because that's why it was. She was the. 1st or the second element. They just backfilled over the debris from the construction site. We were like. What you could see? So hard. Plastic and then shingles shingles, shingles, shingles, shingles, shingles, shingles. Shingles. We didn't know. And then we reached in and pulled it out and we're like, what? The hell? You know shingles are supposed to be durable on your roof? Yeah, those are hard to dig. Through and especially imagine one piece of paper like this is easy to tear a phone book. Yeah. If you put mingles and tells. Us, it's hard to do it. I know. Yeah, it is. That's a good story. So like that. This has to I need to give it a little bit of context. OK, this has to do with the fact that when you like permit and do stuff, you have to do it up to code. So this is a code question. OK, I'm ready as. Long as you use thick wood, it doesn't matter how far apart the board's underneath the deck are. False. Yes, very much false. That is, there are very specific guidelines for joist span and you can it's kind of like the speed limit. You can go under said guidelines like you can have 6 feet. You can have it closer together. Yeah, you can have 6 inches between your joist, but the normal joy span is. 16. 16 Follow joy span guidelines. I will. One thing that has changed that if you did a composite deck maybe 10 or 15 years ago and you're ready for a new one, it used to be that composite required 12 on center in order to not ripple, but every product on the market now is rated for 16 on center, every product. Yep, that's what our that's what our lumber guide. For. Every product that he has, I think, I think it's. Standard. I think it is. Standard, but if you like, get backing at habitat restore. Yeah, you might want to check. It well and whatever you buy, you can just Google it. You can look it up and make sure, but that's nice because it used to be for us, a lot of times we would come and would want to resurface. So you leave the substructure and you put composite on and it used to be the substructure was going to be 16 on center because that's how you built with wood. And then we would have to add joists in between the joists because they needed to be Max of 12. But that's not the case anymore. I was delightfully surprised when I found out. So here's just a little wrap up of our prep section. So that was your code, your permits, and your utilities. Always call Mystic in Michigan at least, it's 811 and it is a free service. As a reminder, research your city's requirements specifically because they often have zoning requirements and different things like that. And know your code exclamation point. Look it up, follow it. Quick tip. So it used to be really hard if you either had to have the code memorized as a builder or the book is literally like the Sears Christmas catalog from 30 years ago. But now as a homeowner, like in Michigan, you can go into Google and type Michigan residential code deck span table. Yeah. So you don't even have to like, buy the book and like try and flip through the pages. Like Google will go find you the rules for that thing. Yeah. And so I don't have any true or false on this next section. But so now we've got the ground level, OK. So we're working our way up the deck. So we're talking about substructure. Substructure should always without exception the ground contact, even if it's. Pressure treated pressure. Treated ground contact rated. Their composite isn't super structural, so there are some other alternatives like steel, yeah, but we're not gonna chat about those. This is really very much a residential deck. It should always be ground contact. It should say ground contact on the lumber that you're purchasing or the lumber that your builder is purchasing. You need some sort of concrete footers if it is attached to the house. It will always require a permit if your slab structure is attached. To your house and will always require you to go below the frost line if it's attached to your house. And like in Michigan, the frost line is different in every area. In Michigan, it's 42 inches. Yeah. Like in the UP, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it's deeper, yeah. So that's basically how far down does the ground freeze? Yeah. And so once you get below that, it's less of that expansion factor. So you're all set with that. So, yeah. And do you guys have anything? I could say real quick, just a curiosity issue. The reason why it matters whether the deck is attached to your house or not is because if it's at your house does not heave because the footer is below the frost line. If you put a deck on your house and you put the footers 12 inches in the ground, your deck will heave. Your house does not. They're attached, so it's going to break over time. So that's why it matters if it's floating. If it isn't attached to the house, it can heave up and down, up and down, like independent of the house and that's fine. But if it's attached, it has to have the same footer depth as the house. Yeah, I have two, two little Nuggets of information. There is difference in different treatments of pressure treated lumber. That's why you look for something that specifically says ground contact. And I'll usually say GC on the tag. Yes. And then also if you have something like a handicap exit or a no entry door and you're trying to put your deck in, you're probably going to want it connected to your house because you really don't want your deck to move independently from your door that you get into the house. If you want to put your wheelchair through that or something like that. Otherwise, it doesn't necessarily super matter if you know it moves up and down 1/2 inch here, quarter inch there, whatever. But if you need to, just roll right into your house. You're. Going to want to think about that. Also code now would like your decking, which we're about to move into decking, but this kind of an in between thing. Your decking should be level with the point of egress from your house and you should have three feet so you don't just step out onto steps. So if you're. If you're running out of your house in a fire, you need to be able to like get out of the house and not like immediately fall down the set of stairs. Yeah. So now we have done our substructure, so now we can move to decking. OK. So there are other types of decking. We're not going to cover those. We're going to cover the three most common types of decking. So we have, can you say the first one, Cedar, can you say the second one? Pressure treated. And composite. Yeah, baby, so the. Three bears of decking. True or false? I can stay in my pressure treated deck the weekend I install it. False. It is so false, so prostate. Is. Soaked and stuff, which means it is moist yeah, like so standard is 6 to 12 months for it to dry out and that's a while. If you want to see if you can do it sooner, you got to get a moisture meter and check that it's under 15, under 15%, under 15%. So I have in this pressure treated section has some pros and cons OK. I have an exception. Sure you can get pressure treated kiln dried which is more expensive, but it means that they before they sell you the wood they have taken the moisture. They baked it. Dry. Yeah, they baked it dry. But also the pressure treated lumber is literally dropped in a VAT of chemicals. It's like a superhero. It absorbs it. So when you buy it from the store it's almost always like 3 or 4 times heavier than a non pressure treated. And you put your screw in and it's. Juicy and it's typically extremely green yes. So if you want something to look aesthetically pleasing right off the bat, your green lumber is is probably not going to be it because it is not a natural green. It is. It looks like a cancer green. Yeah, or like a toxic. Green. Green like green made by a toxic van. Exactly. So do either of you want to hit on the pros and cons of pressure treated and then I'll add what I. Wrote pressure treated. Yeah I will do so Pros of pressure treated and you can tell me if I miss any it. You can normally put your screws right in without pre drilling it. It is very durable because it's very moist. It will take a screw without cracking so that's a benefit. It is very Hardy. It holds up to wear and tear. It's normally very inexpensive is the wrong word because every deck costs a lot of money. It is the least expensive option. So those are kind of the three pros cons as you cannot stain it right away. It's kind of heavy and wet to work with. It can be like pretty unpleasant to work with. And green and it warps. It's green and when you cut it, you have toxic dust. You're cutting because you're cutting pressure treated and. Pressure treated warps. It does. It does add more dry and it dries out. If you get kiln dried again, you're less likely to get warping. It's more like immediately stable, yeah. With pressure treated, we like to get screws on the ends of boards as close to the end as possible. Otherwise you'll see it start bowing out. It will. Yeah. And you hit all the pros. All right, OK, moving on to cedar. Cedar true or false? Cedar is more expensive than pressure treated and it warps less true. Hey, can you hit us with the pros and. Cons. OK, some of the cons are that the dust of cedar is toxic, so you it's pretty important that you wear a mask. You should. Just wear a mask whenever you cut anything. Yes. Pressure treated has the advantage though that it is wet. Yeah, So the dust is a little bit heavier with cedar. It's almost always very dry when you get it from the store, which has a couple of drawbacks. First of all, the dust is very dusty and it kind of floats in the air. It smells amazing, but it is tall. It's killing you. It smells delicious. It's also toxic to animals. I believe yeah. You don't want to leave a pile, you want to clean it up when you're done. Yes, yeah. And if you have like a puppy or something that is going to chew on your deck, that might be an issue. And then also it is very dry like I said, which makes it extremely unpleasant to screw into. You need to pre drill almost every single hole and sometimes that doesn't even work sometimes. If you go in too far. If you go in too far, or if your pre drill isn't big enough, or if you need to put a screw like closer to the edge with pressure tree, it's not that big of a deal. But with cedar. Oof. You got to be real careful. And it's extremely soft. So if you have like lots of animals or like a bunch of wear and tear, you're going to be able to really see that in your cedar. And we saw that with a cedar porch that we built for a friend of ours. She has two pitbulls or Pitbull mixes who are delightful, but they're heavy, you know, they're dense. Pitbulls are dense and they have their nails. And I don't how long? It wasn't very long. And she had like. Legitimately the first time they walked on it and it was scratch to hell. Yeah, yeah. So that will bum you out if you have a beautiful cedar deck and then it's all scratched up. So just don't put yourself through the. Also, pick up your lawn furniture like as you're moving it, don't just drag it across. Yeah, yes, okay. Even like the interrupted you chintzy plastic chairs. Yeah, some of the pros of cedar, though, is it's beautiful. It's so. Beautiful I. Love the way it looks, especially if you take care of it. It ages beautifully. I like it turning Gray. I also like when it looks fresh and oiled. You can do anything to it so you can stain it right away. You can oil it right away because it's very dry. You if it's not super dry, maybe check it with a moisture meter. It also has a lot of like antifungal like properties, so it doesn't grow stuff in it. It doesn't like discolor the same way that like pressure treated does. Yeah, it doesn't take that. Don't like to? Eat it. Nope, they don't it. I think it actually deters some animals anyway, I think. I think those are the. Ones yeah, it is long lasting. Yeah, and it's not as expensive as composite. Quick tip, if you do a cedar deck your substructure still needs to be pressure treated because cedar is not ground top contact. It'll rock pretty fast because it is supernatural. It is the most natural deck product you can use, so it's good to have it have breathability on both sides. Never paint your cedar. Yeah. Oh, I'm pretty sure that they do cedar pressure treated lumber. They do cedar tone tone. Pressure. So it's just pressure treated lumber but they die in OK to look like cedar so imagine how toxic that is. Expensive is cedar. Oh, it's heck inexpensive. It's. So you can use it like kind of substructure and then have. You could, yeah. Yeah, if you, if you're gonna be able to like if you're, you can also see a lot of it. Skirt out your deck and cedar if you want to hide. Pressure. That's true. Oh, we did that last night. Yeah. Oh yeah. We should put that picture up because that was beautiful. OK, our last one, composite and then we have rings. But composite decking can get hot under foot. True or false? Oh, super true, super true. It's worse than any of the wood products. Yes, so this is highly dependent on color and they make an almost white composite decking. You can get composite decking in pink if you want. It is special order but you can get all the colors of composite. But composite is literally resin, wood and polymers combined. So it is it will not rot. I guess I'm hitting the pros and cons of this. Pretty much everything is a pro for it. It's pretty easy to work with, it's nice cuts, and it literally does not rot. Your deck will be and there's zero maintenance to it. Like you might have to clean it every once in a while with a pressure washer and things like that. But it's just it is the Creme de la Creme Ferlaisin the con expensive I have. One more con, you can put screws right into wood and it still looks beautiful. You don't have to hide them. You do need to hide screws in composite or it looks. A little crazy. It looks really bad. Yeah, it looks bad. Buy expensive. I mean three to four times more expensive than cedar lumber and about five times more expensive than pressure treated. And like pressure treated has like a little range of pricing. You can buy it pretty much anywhere. Same. The cedar composite, they make it, it has a it can be like $8 a square foot to $16.00 a square foot like it can be. Well, no, it can also like we had, oh, you're talking about square foot per square foot. But yeah, I remember there was one deck we did that. It was like $90.00 per 12 foot board. Yeah, yeah. Which is insane, but I mean it lasts forever and it's so pretty. So you kind of have to think of it like if you were to like to buy a really nice bag, if you're going to spend the money up front, you're going to you're going to have that nice bag for a really long time. If you get like a cheaper bag from TJ Maxx, you're going to have to rebuy a bag pretty often. Yeah. But kind of like that if you have the funds, you get it upfront, you buy yourself not having to pay someone to restain it or the time to restain it. It is beautiful. And they do in the really expensive end with that high square footage price, they do make dark ones that have a technology that keeps them cool touch. Yeah, they're called Cool Touch and I Timbertech. Timbertech does it, but I think a couple other places may. They may have like cool touch I think is the Timbertech yes term. Others will have that too. So and my con, one of my my last con is that there is skill to install it. So lumber is pretty forgiving when we first started installing decks like we were able to send out some of our mistakes and things like that. You cannot do that with composite and. I tell them there are three kinds of fasteners that should be used on composite decking. So if you're hiring somebody, you should know these are the only three kinds. It's not. Normal to see a yellow wood screw straight through composite. No. Or even a composite screw through a composite. So you have three kinds. You have a hidden fasteners which is the boards come with grooves on the sides that you can't see and then a fastener goes in connects. Between like a little clip. Yes, and then you screw through the clip and it like disappears once you put it in. That's one and that's normal for like the big field, the field of it, not the edges. And then there are these amazing screws that come with matching plugs. So you'll want to make sure that the composite you pick has a matching plug. Most of them do, but not all of them. So there's a different screw for that one and it's designed to go in and set in about 1/4 of an inch. And then they make plugs that are basically cut from the composite and they're like little conically shaped. So you put them in in your tap, tap, tap, and then it's like boop, it's gone, it disappears. And then the third kind, sometimes neither of those are the right thing, especially for like skirt boards like that you put around the edges. There's a pan head composite screw. So it will have a little bit bigger head, which is necessary for some of the thinner materials of composite. So it doesn't pull through through, but it's color matched to your decking. Those are the only three kinds of fasteners that are acceptable. So if you have a deck installed with any other kind of fasteners, it is done incorrectly, yeah, and isn't as pretty. It is not as pretty. One of the things that you mentioned, which is that it takes a little bit of skill is like cedar and pressure treated have a end grain and composite does not. When you cut into it, it looks like a plastic sponge on the inside or like just a dense plastic. It's not usually. I mean it's about half and half whether the color continues to the inside the more. Expensive kind are the same color all the way through. But they still have a different texture on the inside. So if you cut all of your boards to fit all the way across, then you're going to see that end grain, for lack of a better word, across all of it. But. How you solve that problem? You add like basically an edging board, like a picture frame basically around your entire deck. But that also comes with the fact that you have to add extra blocking because you need enough wood to screw into for your picture frame board, but then the edges of your. First normal board. Exactly. So there's a lot, a lot of other things like that that comes with that. If you are going to DIY composite, do some research and look at some pictures when it comes to those little niche aspects of it, like your steps or you know, around a weird angle for your skirting or your cladding, how to put that in so it looks nice. My other tip, my tip about composite. So say you need to build a porch or a deck now and you do not have the finances to pay for composite. You get a good amount of time out of a non composite deck. And if you're planning on staying there for a while, what I would do is I would build it and with the intention that one day you will replace it with composite and then start saving for your composite. So by the time that your deck needs to be replaced, then you can switch to composite without it being like a huge amount of unexpected. Money or even by the time you have to have your deck stained again. Yeah, so if you get 3 years out of your stain and then you can switch to composite because most people don't realize that staining your deck is actually also really expensive if you hire someone to do it because it's incredibly laborious. So if you stay in your own deck, you can maybe spend a decent sized deck, maybe $300 on stain and do it yourself. That's totally affordable. But you're going to spend several $1000 to pay somebody else and the spindles over the nightmares over the spindles. OK, sorry. No, you're fine. So the bottom line with decking is budget is kind of the biggest determining factors. There's pros and cons to each of the three standard types of decking. But if you take, if you know how to take care of any of them, they will all last a while because it will literally last forever. But we look at a lot of decks that are like 2530 years old out of lumber. They were well maintained. They keep up with a regular standing schedule and their deck has lasted. And then we've also seen decks that are five years old that are literally crumbling because they were never maintained. Leaves were allowed to sit on them. So just so you know, it's fine if you have to go with pressure treated. You just need to be aware of what the pros and cons are and maintain your deck so. The, the main part about even a, a composite deck is not letting water sit and like a road away your screws and your structure because it's even if you have a composite, you still have like substructure that is wood. And if you're allowing water to pool or sit on your composite deck, that means that water is also going to be sitting on the substructure, which means it'll be eating away at that. So if you're not taking care of your deck, the composite will last forever, but the substructure might not. But that also comes with like if it's spring and we talked about it in our spring maintenance checking your substructure of your deck, tracking your post, because it's a lot easier to change a post or sister a post when it is just starting to rot. Then if it breaks and then it starts to fall and then all of your composite starts to get all messed up and then the framing of it gets off because now it's not square and it's not sitting straight anymore. Like it's. To do small little bit of maintenance regularly is a lot better than having to do like a whole heave all when it comes to it. And your deck should be sloped away from your house. We talked about grading and our do's and don'ts of landscaping. This is similar. It's not a lot. It's like one 1%. Yeah, 1%. And for Pete's sake, make sure it's not 1% toward your house. Yes, that's an issue. So it should be just ever so slightly tipped away from your house. And this also goes with your steps because if they're perfectly level, that's problematic because snow built like it's easier for stuff to build up on them. So that was what I have for decking the last little bit. Sorry, what do you have? OK, I don't know if you're going to cover this, but gapping, recovering, gapping. No. OK so a lot of people believe that because you get composite you do not need a gap in between your deck boards. That is 100% completely false. It is true that composite does not expand and contract as much as cedar or pressure treated because it doesn't contain a large amount of water that is constantly evaporating or absorbing into the material. But it still does, which means you always need to add a gap. And depending on what season you're in, sometimes it can be a little bit different. But you, you always need a gap. That's just always so cuz we, you, you will get composite boards that were installed right up next to each other. And eventually they will crown and they will like dip down and they will pop right off. And they'll also start to be so tight together that they will pool water on your deck. And then you have to, especially if they used hidden fasteners or something, you have to pop all of those out. And then either you can't use the deck boards anymore or you probably won't be able to if they're warped and all funky like that. But so you should always have a gap between your composite boards. That is very important. Pressure treated shrinks so much when you purchase it, we often don't install it with a gap. If you push it into the composite or cedar, you need to create a gap as you're installing it with pressure treated. We push them together for the installation because they will shrink and create the gaps. The hidden fasteners in composite do create the gap. View the gap, Yeah. Yes, yes. If you use those, yeah. OK, do we have any last tips before? No. OK, the last piece of the deck is your railings. So there are there are many options for railings. There's glass railings, there's there's this has the most options of any of the options for your deck. So, but I'm, I'm just, and we're just going to briefly touch on it. It's just four types. OK, So I'm going to go from least expensive to most expensive. So we have our lumber, which is just like your standard deck rail, your vinyl railing, which is I'd say second most standard. That's our second most expensive. Then you have an powder coated aluminum. And then this has surprised me since we've been working on it. Cable railings are so expensive. They are very popular right now and I've had a quite a few clients. This was the the main thing that inspired this deck episode is quite a few clients who have asked me to do cable railing because they think it's the cheapest. It's not. It's very expensive labor wise because it is pretty complicated to put together and if you get a cable railing system, it is egregiously expensive. I was. The other thing I don't. Understand and it is cable. Railings are installed horizontally, so if you have small children you're giving them a ladder to climb over. That's a great point. I never, so I don't. We don't recommend horizontal railings of like. Any type people normally will. The reason people normally install a cable railing is because they want to sit on their deck and not have a bunch of visual noise. And they're the least noticeable. They're still noticeable. They're the least. Noticeable. We see a lot of them with like Blake properties, yes. Yeah, black powder coated aluminum is kind of the next like least noticeable. But yeah, cable railing, you got to have a very specific family and a very specific reason. Yeah, what's the price difference between vinyl and aluminum? It's can be a. Lot. 00 really. I do. This is a hot take, but I hate vinyl railings. I don't love them. Like I know it looks sleek and stuff and I'm very like prideful that it looks nice at a customer's house and stuff, but I hate them. They're so chunky and fat and so white. It I just they do come and they offend me. And it depends on the House too. So if you look at like our front porch, we have 175 year old house with a big old old house porch and giant white pillars. That makes sense. It goes with it like a a metal powder coated railing would look a kind of silly but in a lot. Of it look almost deeded it. It would, yeah. Weird. Oh yeah, it would look like. What are those? Wrought iron? It would look like wrought iron but a lot of the houses we we put decks in at are more modern and then the powder coated aluminum does look nicer. Even wrought iron looks nicer on a modern house because it's from the specific era. Like my biggest design tip, when you're doing things exterior, I think on the inside you can kind of get away from your style of home more. You can do really what you want outside and we're we're going to do a whole episode on like how to make your home pretty, but outside lean the heck into the style of home you have. I mean, obviously you can do whatever you want, but like if you have a 1950s like kind of like very like cubic style house bungalow. You're not going to put like. You're not going to do, like, Roman colors. Yeah. So just lean into the style of your house. I promise, even if it's not your current style, it really will look good. And it will, it'll really kind of be timeless because it makes sense with the style of house. It's all about like balancing out like what looks good. And this is if budget isn't really a problem, If budget is a problem, go with what makes sense for your wallet. And we're not here to judge about budget. So my few things when you if you want to save money somewhere, I would actually choose to do a lumber deck and a nicer railing than I would to do like a nicer deck and a lumber railing. So lumber railings. For sure. Are the least expensive, but you do have to kind of think about if you're thinking about something that's needing to be maintained and you're going to pay someone to maintain them, we can back out deck after deck if it's just decking, you're going to pay a lot in labor to have spindle stink. It's really. Rough. I also have a hot take. If you're building your deck yourself and like you and your spouse or significant other, you will get divorced if you attempt to install the railings together. It is hard. I recommend someone who you don't like like that well, like you like them well enough to buy them. That you can be. Beer, but you don't like them well enough that you worry if you have no relationship afterwards. Jason I made it through Jason's my boyfriend. We've made it through many of aluminum and vinyl. But at least you're peeled. You do it for a living, that's. True, that's true, but it it is hard and vinyl. Railings you have to be accurate of how they're. It's same with vinyl fencing. I can't wait till the fencing episode I got to tell people about Vinyl and this tale from the field. So yeah, that's kind of the steps of a deck. We it is kind of a big DIY project if you take it on yourself. So if we're like doing like if we recommend this DIY, if we don't recommend this DIY, I maybe unless you're a really experienced DIY or I wouldn't necessarily tackle like a composite deck tomorrow. Yeah, but you really can't do anything you set your mind to. And also these tips are really helpful for you to go into a meeting with your estimator and not be shocked at how expensive stuff is. And know what they should be doing. What they should be doing, it's very important. Obviously you're not going to stock your contractor. Please don't stock your contractor while they're working on. It's really awkward but just so you can like cuz we all know you check out the work at the end of the. Day, yeah, go ahead and stock it as soon as we're. Gone, yeah, and you'll know if it looks right or not, But these are just some tips. I really with estimates, I have a lot of people who like, they don't really even understand the options out there, which obviously I'm not saying that to be judgmental. I'm saying that like genuinely. And there is a misconception about what cost more, what you can save money on. And I hope this like kind of was like a little bit of a guide to help, you know, like the levels of what you're paying for, where you can save some money, what the cost of saving the money is and things like that. Can I give 2 product recommendations if you're doing it yourself? We really love all of the timber type products. Yes, and they have a wide price range so you can find something that works for you. So that's one. The other is for your substructure. Any Simpson strong tie product is going to be very high quality, very easy to use. They have loads of different things. So whether you need of, you know, you need a joist hanger that's at an angle, you need one for stairs, you need a straight 1, you know. It's like incredibly niche things that you need. They sell Simpson strong tie. They sell it at Lowe's for sure. I think Home Depot for sure Sometimes at Home Depot they do sell them at Home Depot, but yeah cuz we found out cuz joist hanger nails. If your uncle tells you that you need to use joist hanger nails and I I don't know if it is your uncle, but if some. Uncle Fred. Uncle Fred, Always. Says that technically your Uncle Fred they suck and they invented joist hanger screws that are so much better. It used to be for screws that the shearing because technically the the salad Shank all the way through. A screw is easy to snap in half and a nail is more likely to bend. Bend and not break. But they fixed it. They fixed it with engineering and thank God for human evolution because this is where we are and it's amazing. Then you can put the hex head driver bit into your impact driver and it's. And you're cooking. You're not smashing your fingers, you're not holding nails. It's great. And then you don't have to pry that shit apart when someone demos it in the future or. Even if you make a mistake. Yeah, and you're like. Go quick now I have to pull all. These nails out, Yeah, Yeah. So we just recommend it's a little more expensive, but honestly, your time is money and that is money well spent. So, all right, well that's it for Dex. Go forth and build or lie there to build. We. Cannot lie. We do Dex, thanks for joining. Us you can find us at how to handy ma'am on most platforms, specifically Instagram. Check us out on there. We update our stories and we kind of use more real time stuff on there. And now bloopers, yes. And now bloopers and. Well, also don't forget to share your outdoor activities with us. Either e-mail us pictures or tag us or. Can they e-mail? Us at HTM myhandyman.com just send us a little quick e-mail or you know whatever the kids are doing these days just send it via that way Apple play or whatever it's called and we we just really want to see what you're up to can't wait to see what. People are doing links are in the bio or the show notes and then you we just, we're happy you're here. Thank you for being here. We're on a mission to teach women about how to do this. So share it with a friend. Like subscribe and leave a review five stars or else we might haunt you. I don't know. Okay, I'm mad. No, we'll see you soon. Bye.
