From Worn Steps to a New Deck in Allentown, PA

This Allentown home's old deck had been patched together over the years — a small wood platform with worn, teal-painted lattice skirting and a narrow run of stairs that had started to pull away from the frame along the side of the house. It still got the job done, but between the aging wood and the shifting stair stringers, it wasn't going to last much longer.

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We took the old structure down to the frame and built a new deck in its place, keeping the footprint small and efficient to match the home. The decking is Deckorators Venture composite in Sandbar, finished with a single-board picture frame border in the same color along the edge, and the fascia and stair risers are Sandbar as well, so the whole structure reads as one clean, continuous tone from the top of the deck down to the last step.

For the railing, we installed a white Wolf Vinyl system with black aluminum balusters and matching white vinyl posts — a crisp, classic look that pairs cleanly against the home's siding and needs none of the repainting the old teal-trimmed wood used to require every season. Underneath, the deck is closed in with brown vinyl lattice skirting and a dedicated access gate, so there's still a straightforward way to reach the crawlspace for storage without pulling any panels.

With the new deck finished, the space quickly filled in as an everyday spot to sit outside — a wicker sectional up on the deck itself, and a small bistro table and umbrella set up in the yard just below the stairs. It's a modest footprint, but between the two levels there's now room to actually use the outdoor space instead of just passing through it.

What used to be a small, aging platform held together with patch repairs is now a finished deck built with low-maintenance materials from top to bottom. If your own deck or stairs are starting to show their age the way this one was, we'd be glad to talk through what a rebuild like this could look like at your home.

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