Nine days on the tools. Six weeks on the calendar. Same deck.
That gap is the thing nobody warns you about, and it caught a bloke at Balgownie badly enough that he rang me twice in a fortnight to check we hadn't walked off his job. We hadn't. We were waiting on footings to go off, then on a wet week, then on a load of blackbutt the yard had quoted at ten days and delivered in twenty-five. Add it up and I had tools in my hands out there about nine days total. He'd booked people over for a date he'd worked out off the nine.
So there are two honest answers to how long a deck takes, and they're miles apart. One is the trades time, which is short. The other is the calendar, which is what you actually have to live with, and it's mostly made of waiting on things that aren't carpentry.
Here's roughly how a standard job runs. Call it a 30 square metre deck off the back of a house, hardwood boards, a metre or so off the ground at the high end, on a block at Woonona that falls away a bit.
Before anyone turns up
This is the invisible part and it's the longest one.
Working out whether you need approval comes first. A low deck attached to a house can fall under exempt development if it stays inside the height, area and setback limits, which means no application at all. Go over the threshold, or sit in a heritage area, or have a neighbour's boundary too close, and you're into a complying development certificate or a full application through Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama or Shoalhaven. The thresholds are on the NSW Planning Portal, and exempt is days while a full application can be a couple of months.
Then timber. Standard treated pine is off the shelf. A specific hardwood in a specific width, particularly if you want it in long lengths so you're not butt-joining every board, is commonly a two to four week wait from the yard. People are always surprised by that one.
So the calendar starts moving well before I do. On the easy version of this job, exempt approval and stock timber, you're looking at two to three weeks from handshake to first day on site. On the hard version it's three months and none of that is build time.
Days one and two: holes and concrete
Set out first. String lines, levels off the house, working out where the deck sits against the door threshold so you don't end up with a step you didn't want. This takes longer than it looks and it's the stage where mistakes cost the most, because everything after it is measured off these lines.
Then the auger. On a good block, footings for a deck this size go in over a day. On a block with sandstone shelf a foot down, which is half the escarpment side of the Illawarra, that day becomes two and involves a jackhammer and a lot of swearing. Fill, clay or an old buried slab does the same thing.
Concrete goes in the holes and then everybody goes home. Footings want time before you load them properly. That's a day or two of nothing visibly happening, and it's the first place the calendar starts pulling away from the tools time.
Days three to five: the frame
Posts up, stirrups set, bearers on, joists hung. This is the part I actually enjoy and it's the part that determines whether the deck is still solid in fifteen years.
It also goes quickly, which fools people. A frame that took three days can be boarded over in two and then it's invisible forever, so the temptation to save money here is strong. Don't. Every deck I've been called out to condemn failed in the frame or the post bases, not in the boards. I've written up what that failure actually looks like in the deck repair warning signs piece, and the restore or replace one covers what happens next.
Roughly speaking the substructure, footings and frame together, is somewhere around a third of the cost of the job. Boards and finishing take the rest. The full breakdown with figures sits in the deck cost guide.
Days six to nine: boards
Laying boards is the satisfying bit and the slow bit. Every board gets checked for bow, spaced consistently, and fixed. Hardwood needs pre-drilling, so a hardwood deck takes noticeably longer to board than a pine one, and that labour difference is real money on top of the material difference I went through in the hardwood versus treated pine post.
Balustrade and steps go on after, and steps are the sleeper. Cutting stringers for a set of stairs on a sloping block is proper carpentry and a day can disappear into three steps. If the deck's over a metre off the ground you need a compliant balustrade, and that's another day or two with the spacing and the fixings done properly.
Day ten and onward: the finish nobody counts
The deck looks done. It isn't.
New hardwood wants to sit and weather before it takes oil, and that's usually a few weeks depending on the timber and the season. Oil it too early and it won't soak in properly. The deck oiling guide covers the timing and what happens if you rush it, which is the tacky mess I've had to strip back for people more than once.
So on paper, the trades time on a straightforward deck is about eight to twelve working days. Real world, with a wet week in there and a cure day and a bit of waiting on a balustrade component, you're usually looking at two to three weeks from first day to last, plus the lead-in beforehand and the oiling afterwards.
The two things that blow the timeline out
Rain, first, which sounds obvious but the mechanism isn't. It's not that we can't work in a shower. It's that hardwood shouldn't be laid soaking, footings shouldn't be poured into a hole full of water, and a wet week here is genuinely a week. Winter and early spring are the safer bet in the Illawarra. Everybody wants their deck built in November for Christmas, which is exactly when I can't fit them in.
Access, second. If the only way to the backyard is a 900mm side path with a gas meter halfway along it, every stick of timber goes over the fence or through the house by hand and the concrete comes in a barrow. That adds days and it adds cost, and it's the single biggest reason two quotes on the same size deck come out different.
What to do with this
Book it out of season and book it early. Ring around in autumn for a build you want finished by summer, get the approval question answered before you're emotionally committed to a design, and ask your builder to order the timber the day the quote's accepted rather than the week before the start date.
Anything over $5,000 needs a licensed builder and a written contract under the NSW building and trade licensing rules. A deck this size clears it comfortably, so get the start date and the stage payments written into that contract instead of agreed over the phone.
Deck in mind for next summer? Get someone out this autumn instead. That's the decking side of what we do, right across the Illawarra from Helensburgh down to Nowra. Dave's on 0414 007 351, or send through the details, and I'll walk the access and the ground before I price anything so the start date comes with the number instead of a month behind it.
Want a hand with this at your place? Get a free quote or call 0414 007 351.
