Deck and Porch Construction in Morrisville, NC

Nails are backing out of the decking or rust streaks run down the boards, or the screened porch roof leaks where it meets the house. Those are the calls we take most often from Morrisville homeowners, and neither one improves on its own.

RK Renovation handles deck and porch construction across Morrisville and the rest of Wake County. New decks, structural rebuilds and screened porches, permitted through your county inspections office and framed to outlast the boards on top.

What the price covers

• Demolition and haul away. Old decking, rail and any framing that does not meet current load requirements comes off and out to the dumpster, so we are never building a new deck on top of a compromised one.
• Footings and framing. Concrete footings dug below the frost line and sized to the actual load, pressure treated framing lumber, joist hangers and structural screws rated for exterior use rather than deck screws doing a job they were never rated for.
• Ledger attachment and flashing. Through bolted to the house rim joist, never just nailed, with flashing that sheds water away from the band board instead of trapping it behind the siding.

Deck and Porch Construction in Morrisville, in practice

Piedmont clay is the soil under most decks we build in Morrisville, and it behaves nothing like sand or loam. It expands when it is wet and shrinks when it dries, which can lift or tilt a footing that was poured too shallow or without enough bearing area. Code in Wake County generally calls for footings that reach undisturbed soil below the frost line, and we size the diameter to the actual tributary load of each post rather than pouring one standard tube for every location. On a sloped lot, one corner sometimes sits on a footing twice the depth of the others. Getting this step right is what keeps a deck from developing a slow lean five years after the last board is nailed down.

The ledger board is the single point where a deck attaches to the house, and it fails more often than every other part of the frame combined. We through bolt the ledger to the rim joist of the house in Morrisville, never relying on nails alone, and we flash it with a metal flashing that tucks under the house wrap or siding and sheds water forward over the ledger rather than behind it. Skip that flashing and every heavy rain in Wake County drives water down the band board and into the floor framing, where it rots quietly until someone notices a soft spot or the deck starts to pull away from the wall. It is a small detail that decides whether the connection lasts thirty years or five.

Questions from Morrisville homeowners