Our New Trex Composite Deck

I am so excited to FINALLY be sharing “Our New Trex Composite Deck”!  When we visited our future home for the first time almost 10 years ago (and our baby girl peed her pants on the lawn and we knew that was a good sign), I fell instantly in love with the huge high traditional style wood deck over looking the water.  I envisioned myself sipping my tea every morning as the swans swam by (and yes there really are swans).  Somehow, in between Earl & Grey, I missed all of the rotted wood 😯 .  I figured, oh…no biggie.  We can fix that, easily.  You see, our house is basically nestled into a forest.  That means the trees are constantly shedding, and “shading” the deck.  The kind woman who lived here alone before us wasn’t able to keep up with the deck maintenance that is required with this type of environment, and the 4 seasons.  Winters are extreme here, and Summers are HOT.  All of this Mother Nature activity really takes it toll.

Over the years we have thinned the trees and that has helped the deck tremendously.  Last Fall, we really took the thinning to the next level and if you are interested you can read all about that here: “Our Tree Thinning“.

Here’s what the deck looked like after many long hours of tree thinning, painting, wood replacement, and everything else we could do to save the deck.  Look closely because I am sure you will see the issues we just couldn’t hide.

Here it is below on a really bad day…

No matter what we did, the wood just kept rotting.  Every year, my poor husband, Rick, was out there replacing more and more wood only to see more rot the next year.  It was getting to be ridiculous how much time he was spending out there.  Like 3 Summers.  Now although he was cute to watch out there, this just had to stop,.

I believe my husband was stung twice by wasps on the day the photo below was taken (notice the spray on the table).  Wasps would make nests inside the wood 😯 .  Another issue we were having were carpenter ants.  They loved our deck and were not helping matters.

Enough was enough.  We did some research on composite decking, and decided on Trex Composite Decking.  If you are unfamiliar with “composite decking” then I do recommend researching it, and reading all the reviews you can find (after you read mine 😆 ).  What I have found is that it reminds me of real wood.  It’s heavy like real wood.  Actually, it may even be more dense.  Which makes sense because the idea here is to be stronger than wood.  It is very heavy.

So, we decided to use the base of our deck and only have the top pieces/railings replaced.  Luckily, that is all that was needed, but still very much a huge job.  Definitely nothing that we could take on ourselves.  We hired a contractor, and he hired workers to come and do the work.  As you can see from the photo below, they began when there was still snow on the ground in March.  It was brutally cold this first day.  I honestly have no idea how they could stand it out there.

Things progressed slowly.  Now, when I say slowly, I mean like a turtle walking up and down our deck 1000 times slow.  A word from the redhead…set start/finish dates and start/finish times with the workers before you agree to hire them.  We didn’t do that, and this took way over the time we expected.  To be exact, 3 months.  They basically showed up when they wanted, and usually only 1 guy for a few hours.  It was very frustrating.

Also, set rules while the workers are on your property (ie. no smoking, no loud music, no parking on grass, etc.).

We had a good referral, and these things still happened, so be stern and upfront in the beginning on what you expect and need.  We had a graduation party coming up, so that was our goal and we barely made the date.  We finished just days before.

Here’s a few more photos from while the deck transformation was taking place.  They are quite shocking!

We finally saw the light at the end of the very long old deck.

I hope you enjoy the after photos.  My favorite part are the lights that come on automatically at dusk.  If you decide to go with Trex, I completely recommend doing lights in the posts and the stairs.  Our workers forgot to put the stair lights in, so they had to come back.

We are happy to tell you that Trex Decking has really impressed us so far.  The material is extremely high quality and the deck feels like a brand new construction.  I should mention that when you go with composite decking you get to choose your colors.  We chose “Vintage Lantern” for the brown, and then black & white.  This might seem odd, but now it feels like we are closer to the water.  The black spindles allow the eye to look through to the water easier.  The white ones before almost blocked our view and I didn’t even realize it.

What’s really nice about composite decking is that the only maintenance required is hosing off.  I feel so much cleaner when walking on it, and no splinters.  I’ve also noticed that my furniture slides nicely across without scratching the surface.

This next picture really shows the “wood grain”.  That looks like real wood, doesn’t it?

Anyone want to slide down the railing with me?  You take the high one, I’ll take the low, ha ha.

So, if someone asked me if I think we did the right thing by replacing our deck with a Trex Composite Deck, my answer would be…

Heck, yes!  I have my husband back, so it was worth every single penny.  If interested research Trex Decking Contractors in your area.

Stay tuned for all of the graduation party decorations coming up after a special DIY craft project next week.  Here’s a preview of the grad party decs!