Stair treads landing on the poured concrete pad, Stockbridge, Georgia
Henry County
Deck Builder in Stockbridge, GA
Eighty-four road miles south, and eighty of those on a single interstate. Stockbridge is the far corner of what we cover, and we have already put fence up in it.
Around 102 minutes and 84 road miles, 80.4 of which are I-75 itself, before a last mile and a half of surface road. The town sits 1.1 miles off the ramp, which is why this drive is long instead of slow.
Fourteen thousand homes at the end of one long road
Stockbridge holds 14,925 homes, and 8,026 of those are lived in by whoever owns them.
The run down is one interstate and then a mile and a half of ordinary road, which is a longer trip than it is a harder one.
We have already built fence in this town, so the drive isn't a hypothetical.
To skip straight past the reading, send pictures of your own yard and whatever dimensions you already have.
1998, and a deck nobody in the house watched go up
Most Stockbridge houses are late nineties, with 1998 in the middle of them.
A deck raised alongside one of those houses has now stood outside for twenty-eight years.
If the house has changed hands since, nobody living there watched it get framed, which makes the structure an unknown, not a memory.
So finding out what's under the boards is the first useful thing anybody does here, and it decides everything after it.
If the frame holds, this is repair and replacement. If it doesn't, it's a new build.
Either way it's the railings and the stair that show the age first.
Fourteen thousand nine hundred homes, and where the gate has to swing
Stockbridge has 14,925 homes in it and the streets are full.
That's built-out ground, not acreage, and it sets the fence problem before anybody picks a material.
Runs are short, corners are square, and the gate has to clear whatever the builder left down the side of the house.
Vinyl is what we have put up here. What vinyl asks of you over a Georgia summer sits with that material.
The full comparison, wood against vinyl against aluminum, lives with the fence company.
Eight thousand households who own the yard they sit in
In Stockbridge, 56 percent of the homes people live in are lived in by whoever owns them.
That's 8,026 households, near enough eight thousand.
Eight thousand yards here have somebody in them placed to build something they intend to keep sitting under.
Those are who a shade structure gets built for instead of the town at large.
Shade is the improvement people make once they have stopped counting the years they intend to stay, which is the whole case for a patio cover, or the pergola version of the same idea.
A reservoir with the next county's name on it
Two named bodies of water sit inside the Stockbridge line. One is Askew Lakes.
The other is the Clayton County Reservoir, which carries a neighboring county's name and sits inside this city line anyway.
A reservoir is water held at a level. It doesn't draw back in August the way a creek does.
So whatever it does to an evening in May, it does again in September, which makes screening a porch a standing argument here instead of a seasonal one.
The depth of the enclosure is the live question, and that page walks the levels from open screen through to glass and says what each one takes away in air.
687 feet at the bottom of town, 883 at the top
The ground in Stockbridge runs 687 feet to 883, and it averages 776, almost exactly halfway between.
That's ground falling evenly the whole way, not ground with a shelf in it.
Even ground is easier to live on and harder to correct in one move, because nothing on it reads as one clean edge.
So a retaining wall here's usually the short one that gives a sloping yard a single flat corner to put something on.
Under 200 feet of change across a town this wide, a great many Stockbridge yards will never need one at all.
Cotton Indian Creek, twice
Eight named waterways cross the Stockbridge line: Brush, Cotton Indian, Line, Pates, Reeves, Rum and Wolf Creek, and then a second Cotton Indian, the little one.
A Stockbridge yard can sit on the small version of the same water that runs large elsewhere in the town.
Water reaching a yard like that has been gathered up before it arrives, and every hard surface above it adds to what's coming.
So the first question on a Stockbridge patio, or the walkway and steps around it isn't what it looks like.
It's which of those eight waterways the yard is feeding.
A fire pit is sited before it is built
Where a fire pit lands comes out of a conversation about wind, about seating, and about how far people will actually walk on a cold night.
Get that wrong and you have built a very solid thing nobody sits at.
The construction itself is hardscape. Which shape belongs in which yard is what the fire pit guide sorts out.
Stockbridge and the rest of Henry County
Stockbridge is one of two Henry County towns we cover, and McDonough, further down the same road, is the other.
Because the road down is long and dull, we would rather come once and do the whole yard than come three times and do a third of it each visit.
The gallery is where the finished work is.
Further reading
Finished in Stockbridge
Jobs from around here
Tan vinyl privacy fence installed across a wooded residential boundary, Stockbridge, Georgia
Deck boards run out from the house, Stockbridge, Georgia
Tan vinyl privacy fence installed across a wooded residential boundary, Stockbridge, Georgia
Original deck before replacement, Stockbridge, Georgia
Eighty-four miles each way. Why is Stockbridge on the list?
Because we have already worked here, and because the road is easy. Eighty of the eighty-four miles are a single interstate, and the town sits barely a mile off the ramp.
Is vinyl the right choice for a fence in this climate?
It holds its color and it doesn't ask to be stained the way wood does, which is most of why people pick it. What it won't do is take a knock the way wood takes one, so the answer depends on the yard, the dog and the trees above it.
Late nineties house. Where does a look at the deck start?
Underneath. On a deck that age the boards tell you very little and the post bases, the ledger and the stair tell you nearly everything. Pictures of the underside answer most of it before anybody drives down.
Nearby
Other towns we cover
Stockbridge fence or deck to build?
Eighty-four miles is a long way and a simple way. Call 706-879-8873, walk us through the yard end to end, and we'll tell you straight what the trip has to cover.