Mr. Deck’s Critique — A Lesson from a Silicon Valley Legend

We finally got a feature on Mr. Deck’s Critique pages — and to a lot of builders, that might sound like something to shudder at. Not this one.

The builder behind that page was Robert Hauck Jr., a Silicon Valley builder from the 1980s known for large-scale “Art Pergolas” — outdoor wood sculpture built with brackets, bolts, and a level of craftsmanship most of the trade never attempts. His commentary was priceless, hilarious, and honest, and at 67 at the time, he’d earned the right to be blunt. He built during an era when Silicon Valley clients had the kind of budgets that let a true artist-builder just play. The biggest outdoor budget we ever had — $700,000, covering 300 feet of gothic fencing and a curved pergola within it — still didn’t come close to what he had to work with in his prime.

Getting critiqued by someone like that stings a little, and it’s exactly the kind of feedback worth taking seriously. His note was about stairs — he assumed, reasonably, that we were working in the southern states where steps get set on a simple concrete footing. He didn’t realize the footings up here often need to go four feet deep to get below frost line and support the staircase properly. Different climate, different physics, same craft.

There aren’t many builders whose work is good enough to earn an honest critique from someone like Robert Hauck Jr. Getting one, even a pointed one, was an honor.

Note: the original post’s photos lived on Blogger’s image hosting and are no longer retrievable — if you have any of Robert Hauck’s work saved elsewhere, this is the post to add them to.