Deck repair near me: can a commercial deck be repaired, or does it need a rebuild?

Deck repair near me is what a board treasurer or property manager types after a resident reports a soft spot or an insurance inspector writes up a guard. The results are residential handymen and national lead forms. Neither one answers the question you actually have, which is whether this stack is a Tuesday job or a capital line. Here is how we sort that on a Farmington Hills walkdown, with the numbers from the published cost guide attached to each outcome.

The repair or rebuild table

The pattern in that table is simple. Anything that can be unbolted from a hard frame is a repair. Anything where the frame itself has gone soft is a rebuild, because the new part would be fastened to the thing that is failing. The probe is a screwdriver or an awl pushed into the joist ends, the post bases, and the rim behind the ledger. If it sinks a quarter inch into wood that should be hard, the pretty surface above it does not matter.

Can you replace any rotten joist under the top deck without rebuilding the whole thing?

Yes, when the rot stops at the joist. A joist that has gone soft at the hanger end or under a leaking board seam gets sistered with a new member bolted alongside it, or cut out and replaced in a new hanger, and the rest of the frame stays. On the published guide that is a section job at $3,000 to $12,000 depending on access from below and how many joists are in the run. What decides whether it stays a joist job is the beam and the ledger the joist sits on. Rot travels along the fastener into the member on the other side, so a soft joist end at the house side is often the first sign of a wet rim behind the ledger. We probe the rim through the hanger before quoting the joist.

The span tables matter here too. A 2x8 joist at 16 inches on center carries about 11 and a half feet in the American Wood Council’s DCA 6 deck construction guide, and that is for residential loads of 40 pounds per square foot. A balcony on a condo building where residents gather is designed to higher loads under the building code Michigan adopts from the International Code Council, so a joist replaced in kind on a frame that was undersized in 1978 is still undersized. Any contractor quoting joist work should tell you the size and spacing they are putting back and why it carries the load.

Can you put Trex on the top boards and keep the frame?

Yes, if the frame passes the probe and the joist spacing fits the board. Composite over sound framing is $18 to $32 per square foot on the guide, and it is the right call for a balcony stack where the wood boards have cupped but the joists are hard. The two catches are spacing and weight. Most composite lines want joists at 16 inches on center, some at 12 for angled runs, so a 1980s frame built at 24 inches needs joists added between the old ones before a single board goes down. Composite is also heavier than the cedar or treated pine it replaces, which a frame at the edge of its span table feels. When a resurface quote arrives with no mention of joist spacing or frame condition, the contractor priced the top and skipped the part that fails.

The other thing to ask about is the sill or cap boards and the guard. New boards look wrong against a thirty year old guard, and on a commercial deck the guard has to be 42 inches high with openings a 4 inch sphere cannot pass. Boards plus guards on an old frame often costs more than the owner expected and still leaves the ledger from 1978 in place, which is why the table above puts the frame first.

What a deck repair call in Farmington Hills actually looks like

1. Describe the stack on the phone. Building type, how many balconies or stairs share the problem, and what the resident or inspector saw. You get a range off the cost guide on that call.
2. Walkdown with a probe, not a camera. Every joist end, post base, and ledger zone in the stack gets pushed. Boards come up where the hanger needs a look.
3. Written sort. Each structure lands in the repair column or the rebuild column with its line item, so a board can vote on the repair list this year and put the rebuilds in the reserve study.
4. Permit and inspection on the structural items. Joist, ledger, and guard work is permitted work in Farmington Hills, and the city’s building division inspects the framing before boards close it in. The permit rides inside the contract price.

Who should not call us for deck repair

A homeowner with a backyard deck on a single house, where a residential deck builder will beat our price and show up sooner. Two rotted boards and a loose picket on an otherwise hard stair, which a maintenance crew can handle this week without a permit. What we repair and rebuild is the structure under apartments, condo associations, and restaurants across metro Detroit, with a probe first, a written sort second, and the numbers from the guide attached to both columns. Every stack is different, so the firm number for yours comes after the walkdown, and the walkdown is free for multifamily owners.