Deck Builder in McDonough, GA

Ninety road miles, and why we still make the run

30,947 people live in McDonough across 11,619 homes, 5,970 of them owned by the household inside. The distance is the other thing worth saying up front. At 90.4 road miles this is the longest trip we make for anybody, and we make it for work that fills the day instead of for an hour of it. If you would rather start with your own yard than with a town, send us the measurements and a couple of pictures.

A 2006 house, and a deck being asked to hold more

The typical McDonough house went up in 2006. A house that young hasn't started rotting, so the deck question here is almost never whether it's safe. It's that a platform which has taken twenty summers of use is now being asked to hold more than it was drawn to hold, and the frame under it has usually not started failing yet. That's a repair and replacement conversation about the surface and a new build conversation about the footprint, and composite decking is genuinely open on a house this young because there's no weathered board a new one has to match.

11,619 homes on streets that were laid out all at once

There are 11,619 homes in McDonough and the streets they sit on went in together, which puts it with the subdivision towns, not the acreage ones. On a lot pattern like that the gate decides more than the fence does, because a run that boxes in the only way a truck reaches the back yard is a run somebody regrets by the second spring. We work that out standing in the yard with you. What a fence is actually built from, and what each material asks of you afterward, is on the fence company page.

5,970 owners inside 10,886 lived-in homes

Of the 10,886 McDonough homes with somebody living in them, 5,970 have an owner in them, which works out at 54.8 percent. That leaves the town a solid base of households who improve the place instead of moving out of it. At this distance those are the ones we can genuinely help, because a pergola or a covered patio ordered on its own won't fill a trip this long. Tie it to a deck or a porch and the whole thing becomes one job, one mobilization and one crew in your yard instead of three visits spread over a year.

Screening a room, and how far to take it

The useful question in McDonough isn't whether to screen a porch but how far to carry it. Screen buys back the evenings and costs you almost nothing in breeze. Glass buys back February and takes the breeze away entirely. A roof over an open deck buys back the middle of the afternoon in July and nothing else. We would rather frame the room in with the deck it opens onto than bolt it on a year later, because the posts and the beam that carry a roof only want setting once. The screened porch page lays the options out against each other.

721 feet at the bottom, 887 at the top

The town runs 721 feet to 887 feet, so 166 feet of change spread thin across a place this wide. On the ground that reads as a long slow fall, not a break you can stand at the top of, and it means a great many McDonough yards need no retaining wall whatsoever. The ones we do build here are short, and each exists to make exactly one thing level: a landing at the foot of a stair, a pad where the grill lives, a terrace that stops a fence line stepping down the yard in sections.

Camp Creek, Long Branch, Tussahaw Creek

Five named channels cross McDonough: Camp Creek, Kalves Creek, Long Branch, Tussahaw Creek and Walnut Creek. Four of them are creeks and one is a branch, the small stream that feeds a creek. Drainage here is layered instead of direct, so water leaves a McDonough yard by joining something small first. We lay a patio, a walkway or the steps between them so it hands water to that first small channel and not to the yard next door.

Where a fire pit actually goes

On the wide, gently falling lots here the pit almost never wants to sit against the deck. It wants to be out where the lawn opens up, far enough that the smoke has somewhere to go and close enough that nobody is carrying chairs across wet grass in the dark. That makes the path to it as much of the job as the ring itself, which is why we build the two together as hardscape. The fire pit guide runs through which shape suits which yard.

Getting a McDonough job on the calendar

We're honest about the drive because pretending otherwise helps nobody. A McDonough job goes on the calendar as its own block of days, not into a gap between two Bartow County calls, and once it's booked it stays booked. McDonough sits southeast of Atlanta in Henry County, alongside Stockbridge, and the way to start is to tell us everything you want done out there at once, not one trade at a time. Finished work of ours is on the gallery.

Further reading

• porch, pergola and enclosure layouts side by side
• what to do with the space a new deck opens up