St. Louis · Kirkwood · Webster Groves · Florissant · Chesterfield
The board by the stairs has some give in it now. You've noticed it for a season or two, stepped around it, told yourself you'd deal with it later. That's usually the moment someone starts looking for a deck builder in St. Louis, not because they woke up dreaming of a new outdoor living space, but because they're standing on the old one asking a more practical question: fix this, or tear it out and start over. St. Louis Deck Pros connects homeowners across the St. Louis area with a licensed, insured local deck contractor who can give you a straight answer on that question, and handle whatever comes after it. Call (314) 626-3663 and describe what you're looking at.
Tell us what you need. A local crew takes a look, walks you through it, and gives you a number in writing.
Call for a Free EstimateMost of the time the honest answer is repair, and a good contractor will tell you that even though replacement pays better. If the frame is square, the footings haven't shifted, and the problem is a handful of soft boards or a rail that wiggles, that's a repair, usually finished in a day. The math flips once the ledger board is pulling away from the house, joists are spongy in more than one spot, or posts have rotted below the collar. At that point you're not fixing a deck anymore, you're patching a structure that's failing in several places at once, and the labor to do it right starts to close in on the cost of building new. A contractor who actually walks the deck instead of quoting from a photo can usually tell you which side of that line you're on inside of ten minutes.
Because the weather here doesn't pick a lane. Winters swing above and below freezing over and over instead of settling into one long cold snap, and every one of those swings expands and contracts the moisture already sitting in a deck's lumber and the ground under its footings. That freeze-thaw cycling works deck screws loose, cracks the caulk at the ledger, and over enough years can heave a footing that was poured a little too shallow to begin with. Then summer shows up and does the opposite kind of damage: heat and humidity that sit heavy for weeks and keep wood damp long after a storm has passed, which happens to be exactly the environment mildew and rot need to get going. A deck built without much thought to either extreme ages here in half the time it would somewhere more forgiving.
St. Louis is a brick city, block after block of bungalows, brick two-flats, and postwar ranches across the older county neighborhoods. A lot of those houses got a wood deck bolted onto the back sometime in the 1980s or '90s, when that became the thing to do, and the current owner often has no real idea how old it is. Pressure-treated pine from that era was never built to last forever, and even a deck that was framed well thirty-odd years ago is well past the point where sanding and restaining fixes anything structural. If your deck predates your kids, or your kids are the ones asking why it creaks, it's worth having someone look at the frame before you spend a weekend staining boards that are going to need replacing anyway.
Everything from a full custom build to a Saturday-morning repair call, all handled by the same kind of licensed, insured local crews. Here's the short version of each, with a full page behind every one if you want the details.
A new deck built to fit your yard, your grade, and how your family actually uses the space, not a stock design dropped onto your lot regardless of what's there. On older St. Louis lots that usually means dealing with slopes, mature trees, and a house that's built out of brick rather than siding. See custom deck building for how the process runs from the first walk-through to the final one.
Loose boards, wobbly rails, and the freeze-thaw damage that shows up as popped fasteners and soft spots near the stairs. A repair crew can usually tell within a short visit whether your deck needs a fix or a rebuild. Read more on deck repair, including what a St. Louis winter actually does to a deck's frame.
Composite boards skip the sanding, staining, and yearly upkeep that wood demands, and they hold up better through St. Louis humidity and freeze-thaw swings than most people expect going in. Composite decking covers the material differences, what it runs compared to wood, and where composite still has tradeoffs worth knowing about.
An enclosed, roofed space that keeps bugs and rain out without losing the feeling of being outside, which matters more here than in most places once cicada season or a July thunderstorm rolls through. Screened porches walks through how a screen room differs from an open deck structurally, not just in looks.
Wood decks in this climate need a maintenance schedule, not a one-time job, and both St. Louis's freeze-thaw winters and its humid summers work against a finish applied at the wrong time of year. Deck staining and sealing lays out when to do it and how often, month by month.
Shade structures that turn a deck or patio into something usable on a St. Louis afternoon in August, with options ranging from an open cedar pergola to a solid roof engineered to carry snow load in January. Pergolas and patio covers breaks down the differences and where each one makes sense.
Across St. Louis County and the city itself, which in Missouri's odd bit of geography are actually two separate governments, not one. We regularly connect homeowners in Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Florissant, and Chesterfield with a local deck contractor, along with the rest of St. Louis County in between. If you're inside that area and not sure whether you're covered, call (314) 626-3663 and ask. It takes one question to find out, not a form.
Less than a full home addition and more than a coat of paint, which isn't a helpful answer, so here's a better one: the price moves with size, material, height off the ground, and how much of the old structure has to come out first. A simple ground-level deck in pressure-treated pine costs a fraction of a second-story composite deck with cable rail and built-in stairs, and demolishing an old deck before building the new one adds labor that a lot of homeowners forget to budget for. Permits, railing style, and how far the crew has to hand-carry material around the house all move the number too. The only way to get a real figure for your project is a written estimate based on your actual yard, which is why we set those up for free. For a fuller breakdown of what pushes the price up or down, see the deck cost page.
Call (314) 626-3663 and describe what you're working with, whether it's a deck that needs a hard look or a bare patch of yard with some potential. We'll connect you with a licensed, insured local contractor who can give you a real answer and a written estimate at no cost.
St. Louis · Kirkwood · Webster Groves · Florissant · Chesterfield
Free on-site estimates across St. Louis County.