Saw a really clever deck repair at a friend's place in Bend

I was visiting a buddy in Bend, Oregon last weekend and noticed he fixed his old deck boards without replacing them. He routed out the rotten sections and filled them with epoxy mixed with sawdust from the same wood. It looked seamless and he said it cost him about $60 for the epoxy kit. He did it over two days, letting each section cure overnight. I never thought about repairing wood that way instead of just tearing it out. Has anyone else tried this method on outdoor projects?

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3 Comments

wyatt7716mo ago

Tearing it out" is always the worst part lol

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elizabetht566mo ago

Ugh, "tearing it out" is the absolute worst, @wyatt771. Like when you peel off a bandage and it pulls all your arm hair. Or when you have to rip out a whole row of knitting because you dropped a stitch way back. It just feels like wasted time and effort, you know? Makes me want to just throw the whole project across the room sometimes.

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webb.jordan5mo ago

Honestly, that epoxy trick is a total band-aid fix. You're just hiding rot, not fixing the real problem. Moisture gets trapped behind that epoxy plug and the decay spreads inside the board where you can't see it. I tried it on a fence post and two years later the whole thing was spongy and had to be replaced anyway. Sometimes you just have to rip out the bad wood and do it right.

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