Exterior & Finish Carpentry
Deck builder and railing contractor around Asheville.
Framing through finish. Cable, wood and metal rail systems, and the skirting and fascia that make a deck look built-in instead of bolted on.
- Trade
- Exterior & finish carpentry
- Scope
- Deck framing through finish — cable, wood and metal railing systems
- Not
- General remodeling · Production framing
- Region
- Western North Carolina — about 45 minutes of Asheville
The job
What this actually involves
A deck is framing first, finish second, and the finish is what you'll touch every day for twenty years — the rail cap under your hand, the skirting board at eye level from the yard. I build both ends of that: the structure underneath and the surface everyone sees.
Rail is where sequencing gets you. A metal handrail on one job went in off-center on the post, and it wasn't really the installer's fault — only the picture frame of the deck existed at that point, no decking down yet, so there was nothing to measure off of. The default fix is a tear-out: pull the rail, reschedule the installer, wait. Instead I shifted it dead-center right then with two screws per post instead of four, and came back to set the final two once the decking was down. One trip, no do-over, nobody left waiting on anybody else.
Fascia and gutters run into a similar kind of problem. A floating deck had two levels of fascia — one over the frame, one where a gutter needed to sit and drain — and the gutter installer's answer was to cut the fascia back with a track saw, in place, at an angle. Slow, expensive, and permanent, and nobody had actually asked whether the wood needed to go at all. It didn't: a piece of flashing set inside the gutter, tight to the fascia, gave the gutter its clean drain line without touching the wood. Same principle every time — solve the actual problem, not the first fix somebody suggests.
Work
Related work
FAQ
Questions worth answering up front
- Do you build the deck frame or only the railing?
- Both — framing through finish. I'll take a job at any stage, but I'd rather start at the frame so the rail and skirting land right the first time.
- What kind of railing do you install — cable, wood, or metal?
- All three. Which one fits depends on the house, the view you're trying to keep open, and what the rest of the exterior is doing. I'll walk that with you on site.
- What happens if the railing has to go in before the decking is down?
- It happens more than people think, usually because a rail installer is on their own schedule. Rather than tearing it out and rescheduling everyone, I'll set it close with a reduced fastener count and come back myself to finish it once the decking's in — one trip for you, not two.
- Can you match new deck skirting to an existing house?
- Yes — skirting and fascia are finish work, and finish work has to read as part of the house, not applied to it. I'll tell you on the first visit what species and reveal will get you there.