Deck re-boarded and stairs rebuilt on a brick home, existing lattice skirting retained, South Fulton, Georgia
Fulton County
Deck Builder in South Fulton, GA
Seventy road miles south of Adairsville, on the far side of the Perimeter. South Fulton is a long way from the shop and it's still inside what we cover.
About 87 minutes and 70 road miles. Forty-six of those run on I-75, then nine more around the southwest side of the Perimeter. Far enough that a South Fulton job is a trip we make on purpose.
A city younger than most of the houses inside it
South Fulton holds 110,471 people across 43,731 homes. Of those homes, 28,844 are owned instead of rented.
The city is newer than nearly all of that housing. It incorporated in 2017, so the municipality is young and the subdivisions are anything but.
It's also seventy road miles from the shop, a long way past the towns this business grew up in, and that's worth saying plainly, not burying.
To skip straight past the reading, send pictures and the dimensions.
2003 housing, and a stair that ages faster than the deck
The houses here mostly went up around the turn of the century, 2003 at the middle of them. A deck framed alongside one has stood through twenty-odd Georgia summers.
The field of a deck weathers evenly. The stair doesn't.
Every trip out to the yard and back lands on the same three or four treads. A stringer is cut lumber with its sawn ends turned straight into the weather.
On housing of this vintage the stair is usually first to go, and it's usually the part people describe on the phone without realizing that's what they're describing.
Deck repair and replacement begins with whatever the framing and the stringers have left in them. The stair and rail work is where a deck this age gives itself away.
43,731 homes, and a fence already standing on one side
There are 43,731 homes in South Fulton. At that size a new fence is rarely the first fence on the block.
So the question isn't only wood against vinyl against aluminum. It's what happens where your run meets the one the neighbor put in years ago.
Mismatched heights. Posts set on different spacing. A shared side that wants agreeing before anybody digs a hole.
Where the yard ends is a conversation with the person on the other side of it, and it's easier had before the material is picked.
The fence company page sets out what each material asks of a long run.
A big city where seven households in ten own the house
71.5 percent of South Fulton households own the home they live in, which isn't how a city this size usually goes.
Big places mostly rent. Marietta sits at 47.2 percent and Rome at 49.2. South Fulton has a city's worth of housing owned at the rate of a small town.
That's 28,844 households in a position to put something permanent in their own back yard.
A pergola or a solid patio cover gets built for exactly those households, and there are a lot of them here.
Twelve named waters, and eleven of them are ponds
The Chattahoochee runs the western edge of South Fulton and takes up almost all of the water on the map. Behind it sit eleven more.
Twin Lakes, Lake Frances, Green Valley Lake, Wrights Lake, High Loch Lomond Lake.
Every one is small enough to walk around in an afternoon, and they read like the names of whatever was built around them.
Small standing water is what settles whether an open porch is usable in July, and in this city it's scattered through the housing, not gathered at one edge of town.
Screen on its own, screen under a roof, and glass are three different rooms. The screened porch page sets them beside each other.
735 feet at the low end of the city, 1,028 at the high
The ground in South Fulton runs from 735 feet up to 1,028, which is 293 feet across the whole city.
Across a city this wide that's not a slope anybody stands at the top of. Two lots a mile apart can sit two hundred feet apart in height without either one being steep.
What decides a wall is the fall inside your own hundred feet.
A retaining wall here gets settled standing in the yard, not off a map, which is why we would rather look than guess.
Twenty channels, and four of them are branches
Twenty named streams sit inside the South Fulton line. Bear Creek, Wolf Creek, Whitewater Creek, Tar Creek and Morning Creek are among them, and so are Pea Creek and its own Little Pea Creek.
Four of those twenty run small enough to be called branches, and a small channel is the one that's easiest to misread in dry weather.
Hard surface laid to the dry-weather picture is the surface that gets undercut later.
A patio, walkway or run of steps here's set out around where the water goes once it has somewhere to be.
A fire pit is settled outdoors, with you
What decides the spot is which way the smoke drifts on a still evening, and how much bare ground sits between the ring and anything that catches.
Neither of those is on a map, and neither of them is worth guessing at from seventy miles away.
Building it's hardscape, and the fire pit guide is where the shapes get argued out.
South Fulton, and the run down the Perimeter
South Fulton sits in Fulton County, wrapped around the southwest quadrant of the Perimeter, so the last stretch of the drive is city road instead of open interstate.
A job at this distance is booked as a block of days, because seventy miles of interstate isn't a drive anybody makes twice for the same deck.
The gallery is where the finished work is.
Further reading
Finished in South Fulton
Jobs from around here
Deck re-boarded and stairs rebuilt on a brick home, existing lattice skirting retained, South Fulton, Georgia
Deck re-boarded and stairs rebuilt on a brick home, existing lattice skirting retained, South Fulton, Georgia
Deck re-boarded and stairs rebuilt on a brick home, existing lattice skirting retained, South Fulton, Georgia
Deck extended and enclosed as a screened porch under a new gable roof, with horizontal metal railings and stained stairs, Adairsville, Georgia
Seventy miles is a long way. How does a job out here get scheduled?
It gets a date and a block of days, not a look-in on the way to something else. That's the honest answer for anywhere at this distance, and it's worth knowing before you spend time on a plan.
The deck feels solid but the stairs move. Is that a full rebuild?
Usually not. A stair takes concentrated traffic on a few treads and its cut ends sit exposed, so it wears out ahead of the deck around it. Pictures of the stringers and of where the bottom step lands normally settle it.
My neighbor's fence is already up. Do I have to match it?
No, but you have to deal with it. Two runs meeting at different heights on different post spacing is the thing people notice from the street, so it's worth deciding on purpose, not by accident.
Nearby
Other towns we cover
Stairs or boards gone on a South Fulton deck?
Seventy miles down the interstate, so a South Fulton job gets a day of its own on the calendar. Call 706-879-8873, tell us what the deck is doing, and send a picture of the stair.