Deck Repair in Shawnee, KS
Rot, failed ledgers, heaved piers, and guards that move when you lean on them. We find out where the damage actually sits before quoting anything.
Every Deck Service We Offer
Repairs often turn into a re-deck or a railing job. It is the same crew either way.
Deck Building
New decks from the pier up, drawn to the 2018 IRC Shawnee adopted.
Learn more →
Composite Decking
Capped composite and PVC boards, gapped the way the warranty requires.
Learn more →Deck Repair
Rotted joists, spongy boards, and ledgers that were never bolted or flashed.
Learn more →
Deck Staining
Cleaned, brightened, dried to moisture, then finished in a dry window.
Learn more →
Deck Railings
Guards at 36 inches with no opening a 4-inch sphere can pass through.
Learn more →
Covered Decks
Pergolas, solid roofs, and screened porches on framing sized to carry them.
Learn more →What We Find on Shawnee Deck Callouts
Most of these are invisible from the deck surface and obvious from underneath it. The inspection is free of charge and takes about twenty minutes with an awl and a flashlight.
Wrong Fasteners
Modern treated wood is roughly twice as corrosive to steel as the old CCA. Bare or electro-galvanized screws corrode from the inside out.
Mixed Metals
Stainless screws through galvanized connectors set up galvanic corrosion. Fasteners and connectors have to be the same composition.
Beam On Post Side
A beam through-bolted to the side of a post loads the fasteners in shear. The beam belongs on top of the post, in a rated cap.
Buried Posts
Posts set straight into soil, or standing flat on concrete, wick water into the end grain at the point carrying the most load.
No Lateral Connection
The deck is strong up and down and can still pull away from the house sideways. Hold-down hardware is cheap and routinely skipped.
Uneven Risers
Riser heights in one flight may not vary by more than 3/8 inch. The bottom step is where it usually goes wrong, and where people trip.
Repair or Replace and How We Decide
Where the damage sits decides it, not how much of it there is. Surface problems over sound framing are cheap to fix. Framing, post, and ledger problems are not repairs at all.
Boards only
Cupped, split, or weathered decking over good framing is a re-deck, not a rebuild.
Small rot
Roughly thumb-sized and localized can be cut out and treated with preservative.
Bigger rot
Anything past that means the member gets replaced. Patching a soft joist just hides it.
A rotted ledger
Not a patchable condition. The ledger, the flashing, and often the band joist behind it all go.
Heaved piers
A footing above the frost line will keep moving. It gets dug out and redone to 36 inches.
Guards that move
Usually a post connection that cannot develop the 200-pound code load. Hardware exists for exactly this.
How a Repair Gets Scoped
Four steps, and you see whatever we find rather than getting a verdict by phone.
Call
Describe what changed: the bounce, the soft board, the wobble, the gap opening at the house. We book a look.
Probe
An awl into posts, joists, stringers, and the ledger. Soft, spongy, or darkened wood gives under the point.
Written Price
Repair and replace priced separately so you can compare.
Fix
Structural work first, surface second, and a permit where the work is structural.
Why So Many Older Shawnee Decks Fail at the House
The ledger is the board bolted to your house that carries half the deck, and it is where old decks give out. Frank Woeste, the Virginia Tech professor whose research with Joseph Loferski produced the ledger bolting schedules later adopted into the model code, has said he believes roughly 90 percent of deck collapses come from failure of the ledger-to-house connection, most of them nailed-only. East of Nieman Road, plenty of decks predate that code language entirely. We repair rot, replace ledgers and framing, reset heaved piers, rebuild stairs and guards, and re-deck over framing worth keeping. That is why the first thing we do is get underneath it and look.
- ✓ Free inspection first
- ✓ Awl-probe every post
- ✓ Ledger and flashing work
- ✓ Pier resetting
- ✓ Stair and guard rebuilds
- ✓ Repair priced against replace
36-Inch Piers
Footings reach the depth Shawnee sets, below frost.
Flashed Ledgers
Metal over every ledger before decking covers it.
Taped Framing
Butyl along joist tops, where rot actually starts.
County Coverage
Shawnee, Lenexa, Overland Park, and the rest of Johnson County.
If a repair will hold, I will sell you the repair. If it will not, I will say so and show you why underneath the deck, with a flashlight, before either of us talks about money. Nobody should buy a rebuild on somebody else's word.
Deck Work Across Johnson County
We cover Shawnee first, then the rest of Johnson County: Lenexa, Overland Park, Merriam, Mission, Olathe, Prairie Village, Roeland Park, Lake Quivira, and De Soto. Bonner Springs, Edwardsville, and the Kansas City, KS side are in range too. Permit rules change at the city line, so we confirm which office your address answers to.
Repair Questions in Shawnee
Ready to Talk About Your Deck?
Call and tell us what you have in mind. We walk the site, take measurements, and put the number in writing before a single board is ordered.