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Almost lost $2,300 on a backyard deck because I skipped one cheap step
I built a 16x20 deck behind my house in Charlotte two summers ago and thought I had it all figured out until the boards started cupping about 8 months later. A guy at the lumber yard asked if I had sealed the cut ends of every board, and I honestly had not, not one of them. I grabbed a $9 can of end cut preservative and went back through the whole deck, and the boards that got treated stopped soaking up water while the untreated ones kept swelling. Before you screw down a single board, seal every cut end the same day, it takes an extra 20 minutes total. Has anyone else had cupping issues even after sealing, or am I just fighting the humidity here?
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hill.margaret10d ago
My husband and I ran into the same thing on our pressure treated deck in Raleigh, and sealing the ends definitely helped slow it down. What finally made a difference for us was a second coat of sealer on the top faces about a month after the first one, once the wood dried out some. Cupping still happens a little in the worst of the summer, but nothing like before, so you are probably fighting the humidity more than anything you did wrong.
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