Wood decks in Central Texas have a clock on them. The sun opens up the grain, the boards cup and splinter, the fasteners work loose, and every couple of years you are back out there with a sander and a can of stain buying yourself another season. At some point sealing it again stops making sense. This deck replacement in Austin started exactly there: an aging wood deck with a wood rail that had reached the end of its useful life. We tore it out, framed a new structure with joists every 16 inches and galvanized connections throughout, and decked it in Trex composite with hidden fasteners and solar lights set into the steps. Here is the whole build.
Deck Replacement in Austin: Project Overview
The homeowner did not want another maintenance project. That is the reason most people call us about a deck replacement in Austin in the first place, and it is why composite has taken over this category. The new deck sits low and wide off the back of the house with broad steps down to the yard, no railing to interrupt the view, and a board color that reads as weathered gray rather than orange. Here is the project at a glance.
| Project Detail | Specification |
| Service | Full deck replacement, wood torn out, composite installed |
| Framing | Pressure treated joists at 16 inches on center |
| Connections | Galvanized brackets and hardware throughout |
| Decking | Trex composite boards |
| Fasteners | Hidden fastener system, no screw heads in the surface |
| Lighting | Solar lights set into the step risers |
| Warranty | 25 year limited residential warranty on the decking |
| Installers | In house crew, no subcontracted labor |
Step One: Tearing Out the Old Wood Deck
Every deck replacement in Austin we do starts the same way: the old deck comes out completely, boards, rail and frame. We do not deck over an existing structure. Old framing that has been holding wet boards for a decade has soft spots you cannot see from above, and hangers that have been rusting since the day they went in.
Building a 25 year deck surface on top of a frame with five years left in it is the most expensive mistake in this trade, because when the frame finally goes, the decking comes off with it. Tearing down to bare ground also lets us reset the layout, which is how this one ended up wider and lower than what it replaced.
Before: the original wood deck and railing, weathered and past saving.Step Two: Framing With Joists Every 16 Inches
The new frame went in with pressure treated joists at 16 inches on center. That spacing matters more with composite than it does with wood. Composite boards are stiffer across their width but they carry load differently, and stretching joists out to 24 inches gives you a deck with noticeable flex between the framing members. Sixteen inches gives you a surface that feels solid underfoot everywhere you step, and it is the spacing most composite manufacturers want to see for a warranty to hold. It is not a place to save money on lumber, and it is the single spec we get asked to cut most often on a deck replacement in Austin.
The new frame with joists at 16 inches on center, built after the old deck came out.Step Three: Galvanized Connections Throughout
Every connection in the frame is galvanized. Brackets, hangers, structural fasteners, all of it. This is one of those details that costs very little at build time and decides how the deck ages. Pressure treated lumber is chemically hard on ordinary steel, and standard hardware sitting in treated wood in a humid climate corrodes from the inside of the joint where nobody will ever see it. By the time a hanger fails you are looking at a structural repair, not a maintenance item. Galvanized hardware is the cheapest insurance on the entire job.
Step Four: Trex Composite Boards and Hidden Fasteners
The decking is Trex composite, installed with a hidden fastener system so there is not a single screw head showing in the walking surface. Beyond looking better, hidden fasteners keep water out of the top face of the board and stop the pattern of dark rings that develops around exposed screws on a wood deck.
The boards themselves are stain resistant and scratch resistant, the shell does not absorb spilled food or planter runoff, and the surface cleans with soap and water instead of a sander. There is no sealing schedule and no staining schedule. That is the entire point of the material and the reason most composite decking carries a 25 year limited residential warranty while a wood deck carries none.
Composite boards down with hidden fasteners, so no screw heads break up the surface.Step Five: Wide Steps and Solar Step Lighting
Instead of a rail and a narrow stair, this deck steps down to the yard in two broad treads that run most of the width of the platform. It makes the deck feel like part of the yard rather than a box attached to the house, and it removes the one part of a deck that fails first and looks worst as it ages. Solar lights are set into the riser faces so the steps are lit after dark without running a single wire. No transformer, no trenching, no electrician. They charge during the day and come on by themselves.
The finished platform with wide steps down to the yard and solar lights in the risers.The Finished Deck
What a deck replacement in Austin buys, when it is done right, is a deck that asks for a broom and a hose instead of a weekend. The color holds, the boards will not splinter under bare feet in August, and the structure underneath is framed and fastened to outlast the surface on top of it. If you are weighing materials before you commit, our breakdown of cedar deck versus composite covers the tradeoffs honestly, and we have written up composite decking in Austin in more detail as well.
Done: low, wide, and open to the yard, with no railing blocking the view.
After dark, the solar lights in the risers pick out every step.
Why Austin Homeowners Choose Brentwood Homecraft
We have been building in and around Austin since 2012 with more than 4,000 projects behind us, and decks are installed by our own crews rather than subcontracted out to whoever is available that week. That matters on composite, because the material is unforgiving of sloppy spacing and bad fastener work in a way that wood will let you get away with. Every deck replacement in Austin we take on gets framed at 16 inches, connected with galvanized hardware, and decked with hidden fasteners, because that combination is what makes a 25 year warranty mean something.
You can see the full scope on our deck building page, read about our Trex deck installation work, or pair a new deck with patio covers for shade. We cover the whole metro, and our service areas and customer reviews are both worth a look.
Tired of sanding and staining?
Send us photos of what you have now and we will walk you through a deck replacement in Austin, with the framing, the hardware and the decking priced out separately so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I repair my deck or replace it?
Look at the frame, not the boards. Surface boards that are splintered or cupped on a sound structure can often be replaced on their own. But if joists or the ledger are soft, if hangers are rusting, or if the deck moves when you walk on it, you are past repair. The other test is arithmetic: if you are sanding and sealing every two years and still not happy with how it looks, the money you will spend maintaining a wood deck over the next decade usually gets close to what a composite replacement costs once.
How much does a deck replacement in Austin cost?
It comes down to square footage, how high the deck sits off the ground, whether there are stairs and railings, and which composite line you pick. Demolition and hauling the old deck away is its own line item, and so is anything we find in the ground once the old structure is off. We measure the space, look at what is there now, and give you an itemized estimate rather than a single number, so you can see what framing costs versus decking and decide where you want to spend.
Does composite decking on a deck replacement in Austin really last 25 years?
The decking carries a 25 year limited residential warranty, which covers the boards against staining, fading and material defects under normal residential use. What that warranty does not cover is a bad installation, which is why joist spacing, gapping and fastener choice all matter. A composite surface on a frame built at 24 inch spacing with the wrong hardware can develop problems long before the boards themselves would have. Build the structure properly and the surface will outlast the warranty.
