Anyone know about hardwood decking costs?

[Dilettante]

Just had a quote back for over 13 grand to deck a small area outside our back door (estimate said 40m2 of hardwood needed which will also do some planters etc).

I am in

Is he having a laugh? That is more than twice what we told him our budget was.

Oh, and nearly £6000 was labour costs as he said it was about 2 weeks work.

DH (who is a carpenter) says the materials for that area shouldn't cost more than £2000. The going rate for this type of labour is £200 per man per day. He reckons your quote does sound ridiculous.

You should be able to do this job within your budget.

Tell him to bugger off and get another quote.

Always get at least four quotes for any kind of job like this.

I intend to get more quotes, definitely.

Quite a big area.... we had a quote of about £600 to do a small area outside our back door too. About 5m2 surface area (obviously would need more wood than that).
Going to do it ourselves though as DH thinks it'll be not too difficult to build and is going to use this stuff - recycled plastic decking. Although more expensive needs less maintenance.

Sorry, meant 5mx5m!

you do know rats live under decking, don't you?

Yes, it has been mentioned to me about the rats. But surely you can have decking and not have rats?

Although we do live quite near a river...

that's what I've been told, the upsurge in rat numbers due to them living under the decking, and I don't see how you could stop them either...

We've got decking. Can't wait to get rid of it. It's a really ugly feature. It's slippy and dangerous despite our power hosing it every six weeks and now that you've just told me about rats, I want to burn it up right now.

Have you managed to get a reasonable quote?

It does sound rather pricey. My DH would quote you but we are probably miles away. (Us being in Essex, lol)