Deck pricing. Composite Deck Project Overview with TimberTech Edge Prime + #DIY

well we're finally done with our decking project I'm going to tell you how we got here and how this project was actually much more of a disaster than we had anticipated took a few years longer than we had hoped costed a lot more than we expected but we are happy with the results [Music] stay tuned I'll tell you the entire cost of this project and the materials that we chose to use now we had a wooden deck that was beginning to show its age I had hoped that I could simply replace the surface so I went to Lowe's and I bought a whole bunch of lumber came out with some friends and began to pull the surface off of Our Deck when we did that I realized how bad the structure looked which you really couldn't tell until you had that surface off and I realized I was in for a major deck renovation not really something that I'd hope to do no problem I thought I'll save some money I'll get some quotes we'll go ahead and get our deck redone now if you've been paying attention for a while this was post covid one of the things you may have realized that occurred during the time of covid was that the price of wood skyrocketed I ran into two problems when it came to getting this deck done first the price of wood more than tripled and then second labor and the availability of labor was way down so even getting a contractor to come out and give you a quote was difficult I live in South Carolina South Carolina has proven to be one of the states that people really like to move to [Music] loud cars driving by South Carolina was one of the states that people really like to move to which means we have a lot of construction a lot of demand I finally got a contractor to come out and give me a quote he said to redo my deck would be 37 000 now that's more than double of what I had hoped I thought hey this guy's crazy let me call another contractor called another contractor he came over measured everything out did his little estimate he said it would be forty five thousand ah no problem two contractors that are totally crazy let me get a third one in well the third guy who came in added everything up gave me his quote 47 000 at this point I realized we're not getting a deck done anytime soon and there was something that I really didn't want to do and that was to do this deck myself the primary reason for that is well it's about 15 feet off of the ground and you need these big old 6x6 posts I didn't know how to set them there's a whole bunch of stuff that I had no idea how to do but getting quotes in the 40s made me realize I may end up having to do myself the cost of wood began to come down and so I had some friends we estimated how much would it cost to get all of this done ourselves adding up all of the materials if I was to do this myself I actually could do this deck for around fifteen thousand dollars one of the things that shows me is that the contractors because they were so busy they had so much work were adding in thirty thousand dollars of Labor simply because they could now you may think my situation is crazy and unique but I actually talked to a friend down the street he's got a smaller deck that's not even as high as mine he got multiple quotes in the high 40s to get his deck redone so unfortunately it's a current reality that the cost of Labor has skyrocketed now we chose to use composite decking this is actually TimberTech coconut husk let me know in the comments what do you think about this color now I actually don't care what you think because my wife likes it and that's really kind of all that matters she picked the color I like it I think it matches well with our brick and when it came to looking at composite the cost of a composite board was about three times what the cost of wood so if you just look at this surface alone this cost me three times more what it would have to do wood now all that said the hidden fasteners are more expensive some of the fastening pieces that you need are more expensive when you go with composite so there is some additional cost there but it's not so simple as saying that composite is more expensive because if you do a wood surface you are going to need to stain that within the first few months of having it down stain is not cheap it's also labor intensive if you pay somebody to do it you're gonna pay a lot for it and then you're gonna need to stain it every few years now is it worth it to go with composite well this floor this composite decking has a 25 year warranty so I guess what I would say is get back to me in 15 to 20 years and I'll let you know whether it was worth it in theory this is a zero maintenance product now we did compare with Trex we like the 10 Tech as well this is actually timbertech's lowest tier line one of the things we liked about it is it does have a full cap of that composite material whereas some of the tracks on their lower tier line was only capped on the top so before I tell you how much this would cost and and how we eventually got to where we are right now be sure to hit that subscribe button help my channel to grow so as I was beginning to be severely intimidated about how difficult it was going to be to set a 15 foot six by six post a lot of things that I had never done before and to run my joists to attach my ledger board into the foundation of this house it began to be a little intimidating that's when I had an idea I called the guy who gave me the 47 000 quote and I gave him a proposal and I said hey what do you think about this what if I go and buy all the lumber and I have the lumber here sitting in my yard then you show up and you just build the structure well he immediately thought yeah I'd love to do that he in fact he said for five thousand dollars he'd show up with his crew took him just a few days and he'd go ahead and install all of the structure for this deck now what's interesting when you think about how busy contractors are one of the reasons that this was appealing to him is he didn't have to go in price Lumber he didn't have to go and purchase it and pick it up he could just show up have two days worth of work and make himself five thousand dollars now he did this with a crew of just three men total so that's a pretty good wage for two days but it worked out for me because what he did in two days would have taken me weeks and I would have had to learn or get a whole bunch of friends in here to help me so that ended up being extremely valuable once we had all of the structure done and he was still over here I actually said to him hey how much would it be for you to go ahead and install all the decking now I had already bought all my composite I had bought my railing and it was all here and I kind of hoped hey this would be another quick and easy day for him and it would save me a ton of time well at this point he wanted six thousand dollars just to do the surface and the railing now installing composite decking is no more difficult than install stalling luxury vinyl plank flooring through your home now I've made a number of videos of doing that in our home and realizing that in a day he could install all of this decking and he was going to do it for a cost of six thousand dollars I began to think okay how much is six thousand dollars worth to me and I decided I'm gonna try to do this myself this is when the calvary came in had a bunch of friends come and help me out including my dad watched a ton of YouTube videos on how to install composite decking you do have to go and buy some particular blades to cut composite decking we used the hidden Fastener system that TimberTech has and the other thing that I was sure to do was to put joist tape over all of the horizontal structure horizontal surfaces of the structure two over time hopefully prevent the rot that I had seen when I pulled off the decking from my old deck so I would say the challenge of deciding to do the surface and the railing myself was that it took me probably about a month I was working in the evenings after work trying to get a few rows in and then in particular the railing was something that I had no idea how to do I Googled a lot for how do you cut metal railing didn't actually find a lot on that however thankfully my brother-in-law came over and he is much more handy than I am he helped me knock out the remaining uh remainder of this railing and the good news is when you look at the railing I think one of my fears was if I didn't get my posts all level and lined up nicely you know you'd look down your Rail and you'd see a little wave like that thankfully that didn't happen we got those all in there secure it's a nice straight line I'm very happy with this railing system it is a railing by Fortress it is a metal railing system and one of the things that's cool about the railing system is if you get any Nicks or scratches they sell you a paint product that actually sprays on and will cover those so hopefully over time this is a railing that will last let's talk now total cost of doing this deck I paid five thousand dollars to have the structure itself installed the wood for the structure was under two thousand dollars so it's not as much wood as you would have thought now thankfully the price of wood has dropped significantly from that peak of just a few years ago purchasing all the decking was over seventy five hundred dollars including the rail system itself and then when you add up all the miscellaneous decking screws hidden fasteners all the caps and components necessary for the railing this deck came out to just over eighteen thousand dollars now originally when we went to do our deck I was hoping I could do it for fifteen thousand dollars now that proved unrealistic and there's one glaring Omission on this deck so far and that is the stairs so I'm in over eighteen thousand dollars and we still don't have a set of stairs for this deck and when it comes to the stairs I'm running into the same problem I had with the decking at the first time number of contractors has said they're not interested in doing stairs I've called specific stair places especially some guys that make metal stairs I can't even get them to call me back so right now we've got our deck all secured off and we don't have any stairs in the long run we would like stairs especially having a dog it'd be nice to let him go down into the yard but let me know what you think how do you think our deck turned out we're very happy with it now that we're three or four months in I think it looks great I'm hopeful that in the long term the extra expense for composite probably an extra five or six thousand dollars for this deck as a whole will be worth it this deck has a 25 year warranty from TimberTech I would love to believe it will last that long or longer this is Jason for poodle dad like this video if it was helpful subscribe if you want to see more content like this and I'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Poodle Dad

Views: 17,830

Keywords: diy, composite decking, is composite worth it, metal deck railing, decking install, how to install decking, diy deck, how much is composite, deck job cost, cost of new deck, how much is a new deck, are decks expensive, price of deck, price of composite, does composite last, best composite, best decking material, deck material, fortress FE26 rail, second level deck, install high deck, how to build a deck, how to install composite

Id: xHLzNeeFo1s

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023