Decks with Curved Rails — A Muskoka Case Study
Curved rails are one of those details a lot of builders attempt and few pull off — something that actually...
Month: August 2026
Why We Don’t Use Deck Clips Anymore
Hidden fasteners sound great on paper: no visible screw heads, a cleaner-looking deck surface. In practice, we've seen this "better...
What to Use? Composite or Wood?
Composite decking marketing loves showing pristine boards and promising "maintenance free" performance and a "permanent solution" to yearly staining. The...
Privacy Fence, Trellis, or Screen? What Your Local Bylaw Actually Cares About
Homeowners often ask us the difference between a privacy fence, a trellis, and a privacy screen. In practical terms —...
We Built This Fence in 1995. It’s Still Standing.
We recently passed by a wood trellis fence we built for a client back in 1995. Nearly thirty years later,...
The Simple Trick That Adds Decades to a Fence Post’s Life
Fence posts fail from the ground up, almost always in the same place: within the first six inches below the...
Why Wood Fences Actually Fail (And How to Build One That Doesn’t)
If you search for information on building a wood fence, you'll find no shortage of advice — and most of...
Real Copper Post Caps vs. Cheap Fakes
It's impossible to make a genuine copper-clad post cap for $20 and if you've bought one at that price and...
How to Build Curved Cedar Decks — Lessons from a North Kawartha Project
This deck, built by Gary Douglas near North Kawartha (close to Peterborough, Ontario), is one of the better examples we've...
Sometimes Composite Decking doesn’t live up to expectations. Composite Failures are more common than you expect.
Composite failures tends to repeat itself every few years: new product generations launch, and the same failure modes resurface —...