Repair, resurface or replace?

The three options

Price your own with the resurfacing calculator and the replacement cost calculator. The demolition calculator covers the tear-out on a full rebuild.

The twenty-minute inspection

Take a screwdriver, a torch and something to kneel on, and check five things in this order. The order matters: the first two decide the answer on their own.

1. The ledger. Is there flashing visible above it? What is it fastened with — hex heads in staggered rows, or screws? Does the wood give when you push a screwdriver into it, or into the siding just above? Is it fastened to solid framing, or to brick veneer or stucco?
2. The posts, at ground level. Probe the end grain and the first six inches. Are they sitting on a standoff base, on concrete, or directly in soil?
3. The joists and beam, from underneath. Look for dark staining along the tops, rust streaks below the hangers, and any joist that has dropped out of line with its neighbours.
4. The boards. Splitting, cupping, soft spots, and the state of the gaps between them.
5. The whole deck underfoot. Walk the middle of each span. New bounce means something has moved.

What the findings mean

• Soft ledger, no flashing, or a ledger on veneer → rebuild, or convert to freestanding. This is not repairable by adding fasteners into compromised wood.
• Soft posts at grade → at minimum new posts and footings, which in practice usually means a rebuild, because the beam has to be supported while they are replaced.
• Two or three bad joists, everything else sound → sister them and resurface.
• Sound frame, tired boards → resurface. This is the case that saves the most money.
• Sound frame and boards, one cracked railing post → repair, and check every other railing post while you are there.
• Joists at 24 inches on centre and you want composite → the frame needs extra joists whatever its condition, because nearly every composite brand requires 16 inches, or 12 on the diagonal.

When replacing is the better buy even if repair is possible

Three situations tip the balance toward a rebuild even when the frame would technically survive another few years.

The first is when you want a different size or shape. Resurfacing locks in the existing footprint, and extending a frame that is already fifteen years old means joining new work to material approaching the end of its life.

The second is when the deck was not built to current code — undersized beam, posts too far apart, no lateral connectors, stair rise that varies from step to step. Resurfacing does not fix any of that, and a permit for substantial work often triggers an upgrade requirement anyway.

The third is when the repair list keeps growing during the tear-off. Set a threshold before you start: if the frame work passes roughly half the cost of a rebuild, stop and rebuild, because you will otherwise pay most of the price for a deck that is still partly old.

Getting quotes that compare

Ask every contractor to price the same three scopes: decking and railing only, decking and railing plus a stated allowance for frame repairs, and a full rebuild. Quotes that mix scopes cannot be compared, and an allowance line makes the one genuinely unknown part of the job visible rather than buried.

Ask specifically what happens to the ledger in each scope. It is the item most often left out of a resurfacing quote and the one most likely to be the actual problem.