The Challenges of Refurbishing a Deck

Award winning deck builder Brendan Casey discusses the challenges he faces when refurbishing an existing deck, and some of the questionable framing methods left behind by previous builders.

Bren­dan Casey, founder of Casey Fence & Deck in Fred­er­ick, MD, is a mas­ter in resur­fac­ing exist­ing deck struc­tures to breathe life back into an out­door space. This has led to mul­ti­ple nation­al awards, includ­ing an award in the cat­e­go­ry of refur­bished decks at the 2022 NADRA Nation­al+ Deck Awards.

Over the last 42 years of build­ing decks, Bren­dan has seen it all — from rot­ted lum­ber com­pro­mis­ing the struc­tur­al integri­ty of a deck, to some ques­tion­able fram­ing meth­ods left behind by pre­vi­ous builders. We spoke with Bren­dan to break it all down and dis­cuss the chal­lenges he runs into when resur­fac­ing a deck on top of exist­ing framing.

What made your award-winning re-deck so special?

“That was a crazy job. It was all on a cliff over a lake, a beau­ti­ful set­ting, a wood­ed lot.

When we got out there, I walked out on the deck and I thought we were going to be able to resur­face it with­out replac­ing the fram­ing. But, when I got to the low­er lev­el, we found that we need­ed to replace about 20 joists because there was a lot of rot in that area. So we account­ed for it, we planned it and we replaced it.

There was also a big band board all the way around the deck that was not in great shape. So we actu­al­ly got out there with Ledger­LOKs and shot them through the band board to draw it back in, to make every­thing look right and hold right.

We even changed the board pat­tern, which orig­i­nal­ly ran par­al­lel to the house. We switched it and made it run par­al­lel to the rail­ing, which gave it just a lit­tle bit more character.

We had to do a lot of unique lit­tle on-the-job things to make stuff work. It was a cool job and obvi­ous­ly a nice bonus that it won us a nation­al award.”

How do you prepare for refurbishing a deck?

“We will do an inspec­tion before we go out and before we would con­tract any­thing. When I look at the job, I walk out on the deck and I bounce up and down and if I feel a lot of move­ment under­neath my feet, I tell them they’re not a can­di­date for resur­fac­ing. I can just feel it – You have to go with your gut in those situations.

If I can walk under the deck, I’ll get under­neath it with my knife and I will jab into some of the joists. If my knife is sink­ing into a lot of the joists, I’m telling them they’re replac­ing all of the joists. I go around the cor­ners and see if the posts are rot­ting. If I have to replace the posts, I’m replac­ing the whole deck. We try to find a way to make it work for them, but some­times you just can’t resurface.

Some­times I tell them [the cus­tomer] that we def­i­nite­ly need to re-frame por­tions or a major­i­ty of the deck, and they say they won’t do that. So, we end up walk­ing away from more than 25% of jobs. The minute we start debat­ing, I bail out. We want peo­ple to hire us because they want us, not because of the price of the job. We want them to hire us because of our knowl­edge and our experience.”

What are some of the worst situations you’ve encountered on a deck upon inspection?

“I was inspect­ing this one deck, and I was walk­ing around it, try­ing to find out why it was so cock­eyed and out of whack. Then I saw this split­ting wedge hold­ing up the whole deck. She [the home­own­er] met with some oth­er con­trac­tors and was on the verge of sign­ing a con­tract to resur­face the deck — she didn’t even know. I showed it to her, and that con­vinced her to let us tear the whole thing out.”

“Anoth­er time, I found that some­body used a flow­er­pot with some con­crete in it to hold up a stair­case. The home­own­ers were upset when they saw it — they hadn’t noticed it either. It’s amaz­ing the things you’ll find when you go looking.”

What fasteners do you use when replacing the framing on a deck?

“We account for a buck­et of Ledger­LOKs on every deck, that is a stan­dard order for our jobs. We go through those things like guys use gun nails — because I trust them.

So when we’re try­ing to draw togeth­er pieces of fram­ing, we’re using Ledger­LOKs. We’re not going to nail it, we’re not going to screw it. We’re going to break out Ledger­LOKs. When we take out all the old rail­ings, we put a six by six block of wood between the two joists under­neath where the post is going to go. Then we use five inch Ledger­LOKs going into both joists, two on each end into that block of wood.”

Ledger­LOK is a ½” lag replace­ment designed for fas­ten­ing ledger boards to the house. It can also be used for a vari­ety of oth­er appli­ca­tions due to its high lev­el of strength and durable exte­ri­or coat­ing. Fas­ten­Mas­ter also offers sev­er­al oth­er struc­tur­al fas­ten­ers for deck builders — includ­ing Tim­ber­LOK, Head­LOK, Ver­sa­LOK and Thru­LOK.

How do you set yourself apart from other builders?

“One of the things we real­ized when we first start­ed the busi­ness was that there was so much com­pe­ti­tion out there. We could either be the shep­herd or the sheep, and there were hun­dreds of sheep, and I just did­n’t want to be a part of the pack, and that men­tal­i­ty of rac­ing every­body to the cheap­est price. We chose to be the shep­herd and lead the pack.

When I show up at some­body’s house and see that blank can­vas on the back of a house and a pile of mate­r­i­al sit­ting in the dri­ve­way – I strive to make it into a piece of art­work on the back of their home. I’ve always felt like there was an artis­tic val­ue to what we did.

There’s over 500 guys with­in 50 miles of my base of oper­a­tion that claim to build decks. I can’t com­pete with 500 guys. I can com­pete with two or three, but my biggest com­peti­tor is me.”

Check out more of Brendan’s work on his web­site, on Insta­gram, or check out his award win­ning builds, fea­tured in the NADRA 2022 Nation­al+ Deck Awards.