Deck Restoration in Chicago, IL

Rooftop decks in Chicago's denser neighborhoods age differently than their backyard counterparts — no shade to slow the UV, wind off the lake driving rain into every joint, and no easy way to get a crew up there with a full staging setup. This one sat atop a home not far from the Lakeview corridor: roughly 400 square feet of pressure-treated pine rooftop surface plus a separate ipe hardwood zone built around a hot tub, with a privacy wall, apron walls, and fascia all in the same dense tropical wood. The pine had taken on the weathered look that Chicago summers earn — a stubborn old coating that resisted stripping — and when we started pulling things apart we found three floor boards that had rotted through enough that the customer approved swapping them out on the spot.

Access drove the whole job. With no staging area and the roof already loaded with a hot tub, an outdoor kitchen, planters, and heavy umbrellas that couldn't come down, we worked in phases — relocating furnishings to open one zone at a time, finishing it, letting it cure, then coming back to shift everything again before moving to the next section. We applied cleaner and power-washed the full surface, used wood brightener where the grain needed it, and sanded all horizontal faces thoroughly, with lighter passes on the verticals. Loose nails, screws, and bolts got tightened across the deck before any finish went down. The softwood pine took two coats of Rymar Xtreme Weather; every ipe surface — flooring, privacy wall interior and exterior faces, apron walls, and fascia — got Rymar Exotic Forest hardwood sealer, because dense exotic wood pulls in a finish at a completely different rate than pine and needs its own product to hold. Both sealers were matched to the same Ember tone throughout. At the end of the final visit, all furnishings went back to where the customer had them.