Things You'll Miss When Using Composite Decking and a Hidden Fastening System

People have been building decks for hundreds of years. There is something to be said about not reinventing the wheel. While trends towards using composite decking and hidden fasteners have been growing, we wanted to take a minute to remind you what you’ll miss out on by omitting traditional deck construction methods.

1. Spending several days building your deck. Building a deck with a good old hammer and nails is so rewarding, who needs time to do anything else on the weekend? Spending all day in the hot sun, pounding away one nail at a time is reminiscent of the olden days. Heck, maybe you prefer the hold of the more modern decking screw. Lining up each screw and driving each one in to the perfect depth with those charming little pigtails popping out is highly rewarding. The yardwork, errands, and enjoying your deck can wait.
2. Perfectly spacing every board. Ensuring each board is individually spaced at the exact same dimensions as the last by manually inserting your spacer for each board is every deck builders dream. Then after getting halfway through your decking, realizing you went askew at some point, forcing you to either go back and pull each board up and refasten or accept it as an error that you will notice for the entire life of the deck … either way you win.
3. That shoulder and arm pain that proves you’ve been working hard. Be it nails or screws, after a long day of installing hundreds of them, there is that pronounced ache in your bicep and shoulder that reminds you just how hard you worked. You earned it.
4. Splinters, stubbed toes and nail pops. Thinking back to your childhood summers, you likely have some fond memories of running across your grandparents' deck and getting a giant sliver of wood jammed into your bare foot. You may have had to undergo minor surgery at the hands of your parents, but you probably got a popsicle out of it. If you were lucky and snagged your foot on a rusty nail that had popped up, you likely got a tetanus shot as a prize. The best part of the shot? It lasts for years before your next one, so at least you got that out of the way.
5. Annually spending a weekend or two sanding and re-staining. Thanks to old Mother Nature beating down on your beautiful construction through all four seasons, all your finishing work is going to fade, splinter, and crack every year. To make your deck look decent, you get to sand or power wash the whole thing each year and re-stain it – assuming you can schedule that around a weekend where you aren’t expecting it to be too hot, too wet, or have a cold snap – all of which will wreck your stain.
6. Building it all over again a few years later. There is nothing more rewarding than doing a job well, then getting to do it well all over again. Those wood boards are going to splinter and crack, nails will pop, screws will rust, and your joists will rot. At some point, your annual touch up won’t cut it and you’ll get the joy of tearing it all out and building it over again.

As you can see, there are so many things you’ll miss when using composite decking and a hidden fastening system, like the InvisiDeck® Hidden SCRAIL® System. Composite decking is made of recycled materials, resists fading, never splinters or rots, comes in a variety of colors, repels destructive insects, lasts over 30 years, and only needs a quick scrub once a year. The InvisiDeck® System installs below the deck surface, self-spaces, installs 3-5 times faster than traditional methods, and utilizes the minimal impact application of pneumatic tools. Who would want a deck that last three times longer, goes in three times faster and requires almost no maintenance? They are missing out.