A Deck Staining Company in Toronto

GardenStructure.com has another Deck Refinishing Specialist Contractor in our group of pros!

Deck Staining and Deck Refinishing is Dan Schwade's specialty. A qualified painter and a noted expert in his field--Dan Schwade and ForestViewStaining have joined our group. Dan has actually produced how to refinish your own deck E-Books . We are happy to have Dan involved due to his long track record and list of happy customers.

He works directly for homeowners and can be booked through any of our existing builders in the Toronto Area or contacted directly at (416) 898-8439. Dan is also available for speaking engagements regarding the subject of exterior stain in the Toronto area.

Darren Smith also stains decks in the Cornwall - Ottawa Area with his deck refinishing team.

To get your Deck Refinishing Business involved in our group (click here)

LW

Spacing Decking - Why it is necessary.

Spacing Decking- To Space ... Or not To Space

Here is the number 1 reason we space our decking.

This project has magnified the issue for us. As you can see this builder pushed the decking tight.

Last year was the wettest year in many decades in the area it was built. The deck faces east in townhomes and has homes to the southwest on the other side so the placement is sort of cave like.

This yard gets very little sun at the best of times so mold runs rampant.
For these reasons mold has formed all over the surface of this deck.

As you can see the mold is running up the wall (though it is winter killed here it was a pretty colour of green). When decking does not dry out it can actually absorb moisture and become wetter and tighter than when it was installed.

When decking is wet you cannot apply a coating and have it stick. If anyone attempted to stain this deck the finish would be peeling within months. If the pores are full of moisture--they cannot accept the finish into them.

I hear all the arguments--the wood is wet, it will shrink and then the spaces will be too big! Nothing looks more professinal than a uniformly spaced deck. Seeing a deck with no spaces tells me that the deck builder is an amateur.

This is a nearly 400 square foot deck with tight decking and tight skirting with no space below (floating grade beam footings). If the decking was spaced and the skirting were spaced this deck would not have had mold issues.

So if mold growing up the customer's snow shovel and furniture is your idea of a quality build--Enjoy your tight decking and prosperous future .

L

Deck Builders Web Traffic- Real or Mirage?

Which Deck Builders have Traffic... and which Deck Builders are Faking it?

When you have it... flaunt it. When you don't, Fake it! Compete.com gathers information from a number of sources and even if the actual numbers aren't perfectly accurate - for comparative purposes they are quite good.

By Compete.com statistics GardenStructure.com has nearly double the traffic that Archadeck, Hickory Dickory Decks, Decks.ca and DecksUSA combined.

Hickory Dickory Decks has long been faking it. Hits are quoted to people that don't know better in order to sell advertising in the side bar of their site. They are actually auto-generating hits with rotating ads. You can leave the page running in the background of your computer and leave for 2 hours--and give them a thousand or so "Hits". They pay an SEO company to increase their web traffic--but as the search engines get smarter, even that doesn't work very well. Compete is showing them with 2000 visitors or less a month. Decks.ca has so little traffic that they have to guess, so they show that as a flat line with maybe a couple of hundred visits a month.

In general, companies that don't actually have much traffic will quote hits. Hits tell you so little that Google Analytics won't even offer that up as a statistic. Visitors, Page Views and Unique Visitors are all that matters.

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Here's how it works.

Hits - Are Requests for a file or information. It could be a block of text, a picture, an ad.

Page Views - Are requests for an individual page. It could be a refresh (F5), or someone returning to the same page.

Visits - Is a person visiting a site. It could be a second visit, third, 10th, or hundredth visit by only 1 person.

Absolutely Unique Visits - Is how many individual users visit a site in a given period of time.

We have 350% more traffic than Compete.com thinks. (Actual Statistics for Traffic Above).

Our New Website was being debugged in April so that caused errors limiting our traffic for most of the month of april... however our actual traffic is stable at 125,000 visits per month.

Google is still digging through the new content so we actually expect traffic to improve later this year as things are indexed to reflect changes. We also have thousands of photos and projects to add to the site so stay tuned!

L

Opportunities with GardenStructure.com 2009

Hot Tub Surround and Deck Designed and Installed by Mark Schwarz of EarthScape, Our Builder in Kitchener Waterloo

There are still hot areas available for builders in the GardenStructure.com Group

Kingston, Niagara, British Columbia, South Carolina and most of California are still available. It is still early in the Deck and Pergola Building Season so get in touch if you want to bring your game up! There are hundreds of fantastic locations for builders to start up building our decks, fences and pergolas across North America.

This year we have started offering rural licenses as well--lower population means much more affordability.

We are in need of a post hole auguring company in Hamilton and Mississauga.

We have New Builders in Hamilton, Markham, Los Angeles, Kitchener Waterloo and Brampton.

We'll be coming to Owen Sound - Collingwood Ontario soon.

We now have a full service Deck Refinishing Company in the Toronto Area.

Dave Macilius in Hamilton and Mark Schwarz in Kitchener Waterloo are both Landscape Designers and full service landscape companies as well!

Most of our builders are booking work in July, August... which is very positive since this is a challenging economy and many of our competitors have seen their web traffic drop significantly of recent in many competetive areas. Some Deck Companies are seeing 75% decrease. Our traffic is quite stable at roughly 125,000 Unique Visitors a month...

Get in touch soon regarding getting started as a deck or pergola builder within the GardenStructure.com group of companies.

L

Cheapest Fences in Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles...

Who builds the cheapest fences?

In areas like Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles and any other large metropolitan area, you will find the cheapest fences built by smash and grab brand new fence and deck companies.

You will get promised Fences for $22 a foot in Toronto, $15 in Dallas, $20 in Los Angeles…

You pay your money… you take your chances. Don't pay these guys up front...or you may never see them again.

Every year there are more than 500 new fence companies in areas like Dallas, Toronto and Los Angeles. The majority are gone in 60 days. I wouldn't expect an actual warranty from any of the budget companies. Face it--if they don't charge enough to be in business they won't be there to fix what they built.

Trouble is, they normally don't know much about building decks and fences. Not enough to be charging anything for it.

Here's a fence built by guys that attested to know what they were doing 7 or 8 years ago… they were actually sub-contractors for one of the largest budget fence companies in town. This time they contracted GardenStructure.com Brampton to build it right this time… Last time they went for the cheapest price. This time they will get a 25 year fence.

In Fact… Paying a few dollars more, for 3x the durability is actually the best value and cheapest fence in the long run.

If you want to see the results of a really cheap fence… click this link to see "Snoop Dog Square Pants" and his top 10 Wrong Methods for Building Wood Fences


BTW, if you plan to build a wood fence on your own, GardenStructure.com sells professional instructions for building fences here.


L

LP Building Products (Louisiana-Pacific) product recall.

LP Building Products (Louisiana-Pacific) Has issued a recall Notice for
about 48 million linear feet of defective composite decking.

Can you imagine strolling out on your deck and having the Guaranteed not to split or crack premium composite decking shatter beneath your feet? I've put a foot through rotten roof plywood and I can tell you all about this painful, embarrassing, did I mention Painful?

It tends to break out the size of your foot...which is a little bigger than calf... it is when it goes over your knee and up your thigh that it really bites. It is like peeling the skin off your leg. It has happened to about 37 people so far. Broken bones and lacerations have been the results.

This recall has been ordered to work with U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission by a court order.

Two questions arise. Will they be providing the labor to replace it? I am pretty sure their warranty excludes it. And Who will dispose of the faulty product... and what will they be replacing it with?

If you ask the affected clients...they may prefer something more predictable like Pressure Treated Pine perhaps?

One composite company was offering 500 sq' of free decking and a free nail gun to try their product... I still couldn't talk the wife into it... at any price.

Here is the notice site Defective-Product-site

Here is the press release from the CPSC

Here is the warning WeatherBest issued to investors... astonishing that people still see fit to invest... that's because it has been gently crafted so as not to alarm folks.

This stuff was sold under the Veranda, WeatherBest, ABTCo decking and Railing and Home Depot is named in the recall.

As you know Eon went skipped bankruptcy and entered liquidation a while back--

Attention Composite Decking Companies... Home Depot has a HUGE vacuum in their composite decking products division.... They Bought Eon, They bought Veranda, They bought Trex. and people will buy whatever product HD adopts Next.

L

The New GardenStructure.com Website is Up!

This is simply the best display of high end decks and pergolas worldwide.

The navigation issues that plagued us on the last site have been reworked. When you want to see Decks, curser over decks, gallery or diy plans to see the different sections for decks.

When you enter the gallery you will find many decks, pergolas, wood fences, landscape designers, arbours, outdoor kitchens... you should see stellar examples of whatever you seek.

Now, when you get into the gallery and click on a thumbnail, an entire page opens to show you more angles and examples of the design or plans in use with designer credits.

Only about half the content we plan to include is up... so bookmark it and come back often.

L