Every number above is checkable at the yard — ask for the ledger and we will open it on the counter.
Services & rates
The rate card, nailed down
One page, every line named — posts, hardware, haul-away. If a number can move after you sign it, it was never a quote; it was a guess wearing a letterhead.
Composite deck, installedfrom $58/sq ft
hidden clips, picture-frame edge
Pressure-treated deckfrom $41/sq ft
the honest budget build
Cedar upgradefrom $53/sq ft
kiln-dried 5/4×6, plugged screws
Aluminum rail, installedfrom $114/ln ft
with the blocking code asks for
Pergola, 12×14from $6,900
engineered to the 40-psf snow load
Helical pier upgrade+$22/pier
torqued to gauge, no cure days
Frost first
Forty-eight inches, every post, corners first. The Notch lifts a shallow post about an inch a year, and we would rather dig once on day one than twice on year five.
The price is the price
A fixed quote, line-itemed, held for sixty days. Weather slips the calendar and never the number — weather days are inside the band we quote.
One crew
The crew that sets your posts hangs your rail. The same four names for seventeen years, and the voice on the phone belongs to one of them.
Tanners Notch · Rock Rill · 2024–2026
Recent builds, photographed straight on
Day 1
The measure
We tape the yard, shoot the grade and count the piers in front of you. The quote is written the same day and holds for sixty days.
Days 2–5
Permits & locates
We file the drawing with the county and call 811 — both in your name, both before any hole, both free to you.
Days 6–8
Piers & frame
Augered to 48 inches and poured, or helical torqued if the yard is fenced or finished. Frame at twelve-inch centres, blocking at every rail post.
Days 9–10
Boards, rail, sweep
Boards gapped for the valley, rail at 36 inches where the drop asks for it, the site swept and the walkthrough booked.
How it goes
Ten days, start to sweep
The same calendar on every build: measure Monday, quote by Friday, permits and locates the week after, and a crew of four who have worked together since the first season. Weather slips the days and never the number — weather is inside the band we quote.
Three quotes in a week and Sawbuck was the only one that itemized the footings as their own line — forty-eight inches, eighteen holes, priced to the bag of concrete. The build took nine days and the inspector signed the framing on his first look at it.
They said Friday and the quote came Thursday afternoon, every line named down to the haul-away. Same four names start to finish, and they swept the drive before the truck pulled out — my neighbour signed with them the following Tuesday.
The pergola drawing came with the snow-load arithmetic printed on it, which the county appreciated and so did my insurance agent. Two winters of wet snow since and it has not moved a hair — forty pounds a square foot, on paper, before we paid a dollar.
Asked before every quote
How can the quote really be free?
Because the measure takes forty minutes and the arithmetic is honest. We write maybe sixty quotes a season and win about half of them — the free quote is the cheapest advertising in two towns, and the ones we lose keep the number to argue with other crews. Everybody wins.
Why forty-eight-inch footings when the county asks for forty-two?
The frost map says forty-two, and the north-side soil in the Notch says worse. The six extra inches cost a morning with the auger and buy a decade of not watching the corner post lift, so we dig forty-eight and print it on the quote — you should know what you are paying for.
Pressure-treated or composite — what does the extra seventeen dollars a foot buy?
Saturdays. Composite carries a 25-year fade warranty and asks for one wash a season; pressure-treated is the honest budget build and asks for stain every third summer and the occasional popped screw to chase. By year ten the two cost nearly the same — one just bills you in weekends.
What happens if it rains during the nine days?
The calendar slips and the price does not. Weather days are built into the band we quote — that is why it is a band of days and not a single promise — and the crew frames in the dry windows the valley hands us.
Before you call
The Friday questions
Fourteen years of Friday quotes distilled. If yours is not here, call the shop — the voice that answers has dug most of the holes.
Friday, the quote. Memorial Day, the deck.
One measure, one line-itemed quote held for sixty days, one crew of four who have been the same four since 2009. Send the yard and the size — the number comes back by Friday.
Sawbuck Deck Co. · Lic. #D-88107 · Tanners Notch & Rock Rill · quotes@sawbuckdeck.example · 9 Notch Road, Tanners Notch