A deck rarely decides whether you buy a house, but it often decides what the first year in that house looks like. A home inspector walks the deck for the same reason a buyer should: the deck is a structure that carries people, holds snow for months, and connects to the house at exactly one
What a Home Inspector Checks on a Deck: A Boston Buyer’s Guide Read More »
A deck in Greater Boston spends months under snow, meltwater, and freeze-thaw cycles, and then it is expected to come back in spring looking the way it did in October. Winterizing is what happens in between those two pictures. It is not one job, and it is not just throwing a tarp over the boards.
How to Winterize Your Deck Before the First Boston Freeze Read More »
What Ice Melt Does to Deck Hardware: Fasteners, Joist Hangers and Railings When Boston homeowners think about winter deck care, they picture the boards: shoveling technique, which de-icer to buy, whether the surface will stain or pit. That is the visible half of the story, and it is the half every winter article covers. The
What Ice Melt Does to Deck Hardware: Fasteners, Joist Hangers and Railings Read More »
Screened Porch in Greater Boston: What to Know Before You Build Every June, the same thing happens across Greater Boston. The deck furniture comes out, the grill gets cleaned, and within a week the mosquitoes arrive to reclaim the backyard. A screened porch is the answer a lot of homeowners land on: all of the
Screened Porch in Greater Boston: What to Know Before You Build Read More »
Deck Lighting for Boston’s Dark Season Every year in Greater Boston, the deck season does not end because it gets cold. It ends, for most families, because it gets dark. In August you are eating outside at seven in the evening; by the first week of November the same deck is a black rectangle past
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A deck project is not one job. It is a sequence: design, permitting, construction, and a final walkthrough, each with its own decisions and its own waiting. The homeowners who feel most at ease during that sequence are rarely the ones who know the most about framing or fasteners. They are the ones who knew,
Before Your Deck Project Starts: A Communication Checklist for Greater Boston Homeowners Read More »
Can You Build a Deck in Boston During Winter? Ask a Boston homeowner in late October whether a deck can go up in winter, and you will usually get two confident answers: yes, builders work all year, and no, the ground is frozen. Both answers miss the useful part. In Greater Boston, winter deck work
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This guide collects our six articles for planning and caring for a deck and porch through a Boston winter, in reading order: planning and building a deck, fall prep and snow-season care, and the porch piece. Each section below is a summary of the full article it links to. Before you build: permits, materials, and
Winter Deck & Porch Guide Read More »
Every October, the same question starts coming up in Greater Boston: now that the screens are coming down and the porch furniture is going into storage, can the three-season porch earn its keep through winter? The honest answer depends on which winter you mean. October and April? Absolutely — that’s what the room was built
Every Boston winter brings the same question from homeowners: with the driveway to shovel and the sidewalk to clear, does the deck really need clearing too — and when it ices over, what’s actually safe to put down on it? The short answers: yes, clearing is worth it, and de-icing is where a lot of
Should You Clear Snow Off Your Deck? Safe De-Icing for Boston Winters Read More »
