Deck Repair in St. Louis, MO

Boards going soft underfoot. A railing that moves when you lean on it. A stair tread that flexes. Most decks don’t fail all at once — they fail in one spot, and that spot spreads. We fix the spot. Same crew that builds our new decks, no subcontractors, and a written price before anyone picks up a tool.

What we fix

• Rotted and soft decking boards. If a deck needs more than a couple of boards replaced, usually almost all of them are bad and the whole surface needs to come off at once. Patching a few just moves the problem down the deck. We can normally tell you why it happened, too, and it is usually one of two things: the cut ends were never sealed, or somebody coated the deck with a product sold as a stain that is really a paint. That kind of film traps moisture against the wood like a plastic bag and rots the boards out faster than no finish at all.
• Ledger board and flashing. Straight answer on this one: a ledger board cannot be replaced with the deck still attached to the house. What we can do, if water is getting in behind it, is pull the first couple of deck boards along the wall and install flashing from the top. That stops the water without taking the deck off the building.
• Loose and wobbly railings. Nearly every time, the rail posts were never fastened to the deck frame correctly. They are held on with deck screws and nothing else. We can usually pull them tight for good with carriage bolts so it does not come back. The other thing we run into is a post that has rotted through on its own, again from being coated in paint instead of a penetrating stain.
• Stairs and stringers. Stairs are not something we patch. If they are bad, they get rebuilt. In a rare case we can buy you a couple of years by adding blocking alongside a stringer and refastening a tread, but we do not like doing it and we will tell you up front that it is a stopgap, not a fix.
• Joists, beams and hangers. Sistering rotted joists, and replacing hangers that were face-nailed with the wrong fastener instead of hanger-nailed.
• Footings and posts. If the top or the bottom of a support post is rotten where it ties into the beam or the deck frame, we can replace the post. What usually comes with it is the reason it rotted in the first place: it was never sitting on a real footing. A concrete pier needs to be 12 inches across, 30 inches deep, and belled out to 16 inches at the bottom. If yours is not, we have to pour one that is before a new post goes on it.

When a repair is the right call — and when it isn’t

Not every bad deck needs to come down, and not every deck is worth saving. If the framing is sound and the problem is on the surface, a repair is almost always the cheaper answer and we will tell you so. But if the ledger is rotted, the footings are wrong and the framing is undersized, you are putting money into a deck that will need replacing in a few years anyway.

How we work

• Photos first, then a ballpark on the phone. We do not drive out and give a free estimate cold. Text us a few photos of the deck and what is going on with it, and we will talk real numbers with you over the phone first. Once you have a ballpark and it makes sense to both of us, then we set up a time to come look at it in person.
• If we open it up and find more, you hear about it before we go further. Rot hides. Once boards come off we sometimes find damage nobody could have seen from the top. When that happens we stop and walk you through it: what we found, what your options are, what each one costs, and what you can realistically expect if you do the work and if you leave it. You make the call from there.
• Six months on repair work. Here is the honest version. A long warranty on a repair is hard to stand behind, because we are working on a deck somebody else built and the parts around what we fixed can fail on their own schedule. What we do stand behind is our own work and the material we put in. If we replace a support post and that post turns out to be defective, we come back and replace it. That runs six months from the completion date.

Where we work

Maryland Heights, St. Charles, O’Fallon, St. Peters, Ballwin, Chesterfield, Wentzville, Dardenne Prairie, Wildwood, Creve Coeur, and the rest of the St. Louis metro.

Get your deck fixed

Call and we will let you know our current scheduling. Call 314-440-8873 or send us a message.

Elevate your home’s outdoor appeal with a stunning deck or fence from Maniaci Construction. Contact us today for a free consultation and let’s create the outdoor oasis you’ve always dreamed of!