Can I Just Replace My Deck Boards?

By Thomas Williams, All American Renovations Metro Atlanta and Middle Georgia · September 2026

Often, yes — and when the answer is yes it’s the cheapest honest thing you can do to that deck.

Whether your frame is structurally sound is the single biggest thing standing between a smaller number and a bigger one. Framing is the largest block of cost on a deck, and keeping a good one takes all of it off the table.

But nobody can tell you whether yours is sound from a photo, from the driveway, or from a blog post — including this one. That call takes somebody under there who knows what they’re looking at. What you can do is find out which conversation you’re likely in, and there’s one measurement that gets you most of the way.

---

What “just the boards” actually means

When we resurface a deck, the posts, footings, beams and joists stay. Everything you walk on and hold onto goes.

What comes off: the decking, the railing, the stair treads and risers, and the fascia.

What goes back: new boards, new railing, new treads and risers, new fascia — plus joist tape over the existing frame, which is a strip of protective membrane over the top of every joist. That last one matters more than it sounds. Your old frame has a few hundred holes in it from the fasteners we just pulled out, and every one of them is a place for water to sit. Taping the joists before the new boards go down is the difference between that frame lasting another twenty years and it lasting eight.

What doesn’t change: the size, the shape, the height and the layout. A resurface is the same deck in better clothes. If you want it bigger, or a different shape, you’re rebuilding whether the frame is sound or not.

---

Why keeping the frame saves so much

Three things leave the job when the structure stays.

Framing labor and framing material — the largest single block of cost on a rebuild, and it disappears entirely.

Most of the demolition. Pulling boards and rails is real work, but it’s a fraction of tearing a structure down and hauling it away.

Usually the permit and the drawings. Replacing boards and railing on an existing structure typically doesn’t require what a new structure does. Typically — your county decides that, not me, and it’s worth a phone call.

I’m not going to put a percentage on it, because there isn’t an honest one. How much you save depends on how tall the deck is, how much of it is railing, and what we find when the boards come off. What I can tell you is that the framing is the biggest single line on a rebuild, and if yours is good, you don’t pay it.

What doesn’t leave the job is the railing, and that surprises people. On a rebuild the railing is one line among many. On a resurface it’s routinely the single biggest thing on the proposal — sometimes 40% of the whole job. Same rail, smaller total, bigger share.

---

How far apart are your joists? And why we add joists even when we don’t have to.

This is the whole ballgame and almost nobody asks it first.

Composite decking needs joists closer together than a wood deck does. Today the requirement is 16 inches on center if the boards run straight across, and 12 inches if you run them at an angle.

Here’s the part I tell every customer. When we started installing TimberTech in the mid-2000s, the requirement was 12 inches on center either way — straight or diagonal, it didn’t matter. The manufacturer relaxed that spec over the years.

We didn’t.

I still believe in 12 inches on center, whichever direction the boards run. The boards have less distance to span, so there’s less flex in them from the day they go down and less of it twenty years later. It’s more joists, more hangers and more labor, and we do it anyway.

So here’s what we actually tell people:

At 12 inches on center, your frame is already where we’d build it. Nothing to add.

At 16 inches on center, you meet the manufacturer’s spec and most contractors will lay boards on it without a word. We’ll offer to add joists — assuming the rest of the structure checks out. You can say no. Plenty of people do, and the deck is still warrantable. But you’ll have been told, and you’ll have a price for it.

At 24 inches on center, composite cannot go down on that frame as it stands, full stop. That’s rare around here — and honestly, if a deck in Georgia is framed at 24 inches, it’s usually old enough that the framing itself isn’t worth reusing. At that point adding joists is money spent propping up a structure you should probably be replacing. We’d tell you that rather than sell you the middle option.

This is the number that decides which conversation you’re in, and you can go find it out today.

---

The one that matters most: the ledger

The ledger is the board bolted to your house that the whole deck hangs from.

It is the single most common point of failure on a residential deck, and older decks are frequently built with the ledger nailed rather than bolted, and with no flashing above it. Water runs down your siding, behind that board, and sits against your house framing for twenty years.

When the deck boards come off, we can see it. On a deck that’s ten feet up, that’s not a cosmetic finding.

If the ledger is wrong, it gets fixed. That isn’t an upsell and it isn’t optional — it’s the part holding your deck to your house. It’s also a strong argument for doing this work rather than putting it off another five years, because right now you have no way of knowing.

---

And the boring one: posts and footings

The higher the deck, the more load those posts carry and the more the footings matter.

Go look at the base of each post. Is it sitting on a concrete footing, or on a patio stone, or straight on the dirt? Is the post bottom soft, split, or sitting in standing water? Has anything moved — is the deck out of level in a way it wasn’t?

On a deck a couple of feet off the ground, small problems here are small problems. On a deck a story up, they aren’t.

---

What we find when the boards come off

Every resurface has some of this, and we price a range for it rather than pretending we can see through your deck from the driveway.

Joists soft at the ends where they meet the ledger. A beam that was never quite right. Blocking that’s rotted out. Hangers that have rusted through, or were never there.

You will also need blocking added for the new railing posts, because a rail post has to be tied into the frame properly and older decks often just bolted the post to the rim board.

Ask any contractor quoting you how they handle what’s found underneath. A number that pretends nothing will be found is a number that’s going to change. Ours is a range with a reason attached, and we’d rather explain it up front than argue about it in week two.

⭐ Go check your joist spacing. It takes five minutes.

Get under the deck, or look up through the gaps between your current boards if you can’t.

Measure from the center of one joist to the center of the next.

• 12 inches — your frame is already built the way we’d build it. Resurfacing is very likely your cheaper path.
• 16 inches — composite is on the table and this is fine by the manufacturer. Ask anyone quoting you whether they’d add joists, and what it costs. If nobody brings it up, bring it up yourself.
• 24 inches — composite can’t go down as it stands. It’s uncommon in Georgia, and it usually means the deck is old enough that you should be pricing a rebuild rather than a repair. Get both numbers.

Measure in a few spots. Older decks wander, and one bay at 24 inches in the middle of a 16-inch deck is worth knowing about.

While you’re under there, take pictures. The ledger where the deck meets the house. The bottom of a couple of posts. Anything that looks soft, rusted or wrong to you. Send them along when you call somebody — it saves everybody a trip.

---

And here’s where you should stop

Measuring joist spacing is a tape measure and a number. Judging whether your frame is structurally sound is not.

Whether that ledger is attached correctly. Whether those footings are adequate for the load and the soil. Whether a joist that looks fine is sound at the end you can’t see. Whether the hangers are the right ones, installed the right way, and still doing their job after fifteen years.

None of that is a homeowner call, and I’d be doing you a disservice by implying it is. It takes somebody who has pulled the boards off a few hundred of these and knows what a bad one looks like.

So measure your joists, take your pictures, and then get a professional under there before you commit to either path. Not because you can’t be trusted with the information — because the consequences of getting it wrong are a deck that’s holding people up ten feet in the air.

Any contractor worth hiring will go look. If somebody quotes you a resurface without getting under the deck, that’s your answer about them.

---

The uncomfortable part

Sometimes the resurface is the wrong answer and we’ll tell you. A frame at 24 inches on center, a bad ledger and posts on dirt add up to a deck where you’d be putting a lot of new material on top of a structure that isn’t worth it. We’d rather lose that job than build it.

And the joist thing costs us work both ways. Telling someone at 16 inches on center that we’d add joists puts a number on our proposal that the next contractor’s proposal doesn’t have. We lose bids over it. We’d still rather explain a standard than quietly drop it to win.

And sometimes the resurface is exactly right and it costs us money to say so. If your frame is sound and spaced properly, the honest recommendation saves you thousands and gets us a smaller job. That happens regularly. It’s the answer anyway.

One more thing worth knowing: resurfacing doesn’t reset the clock on the structure. You’re getting boards and railing with thirty-year warranties sitting on framing that’s already fifteen years old. That’s fine if the framing is good. It’s just worth understanding what you bought.

---

What I’d tell you if you called me

• Measure the joist spacing before you call anybody. It’s the fastest way to know which conversation you’re in — and it’s the one part of this you can settle yourself.
• Don’t try to judge the structure yourself. Get somebody qualified under there. That’s the whole ballgame and it isn’t a driveway call.
• If you want the deck bigger or a different shape, stop reading about resurfacing. You’re rebuilding.
• Ask what happens to the joists before the new boards go on. If joist tape isn’t in the answer, ask why not.
• Get the railing priced separately. On a resurface it’s likely the biggest number on the page, and you should see it.
• At 16 inches on center, ask what it costs to add joists. You don’t have to do it. You should get to decide.
• Don’t let anyone put composite on 24-inch centers because you asked them to. If they’ll do that, think about what else they’ll do.