Selling Decks — Where Are All the Big Decks?

Lawrence Winterburn, founder of GardenStructure.com, started building decks in Burlington, Ontario at eighteen years old — after spending the prior year working for roughly five of the best deck companies in the province to learn pricing, technique, and basic marketing.

The first business ran under a name his father came up with: “Fair Deal Carpentry.” It sounded right at the time. In practice, it attracted exactly the kind of client the name promised — bargain seekers who negotiated through the entire job, with little room for profit.

In 1991, a serious accident changed the trajectory of the business. A drunk driver ran a red light in Hamilton and T-boned his truck during a referred renovation job — his arm went through the driver’s side window, and the truck itself was shortened by roughly three feet in the impact. Six months of rehab followed before he could turn the ignition key again, and four months of work were lost at a critical early stage of the business.

What followed was a slow rebuild — and a hard lesson that the name on the truck matters as much as the work behind it. Changing the name, and rethinking who the business was actually built to serve, was the turning point that led to GardenStructure.com.