Had Small Deck And Stairs Built. All Nails Are Down In Wood Leaving Holes. Should Nails Be Level With Wood ?
This means we have a huge number of holes to fill. What is the correct way to do this? Should the contractor be filling the holes or is that something we as owner are supposed to do.
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I wish we would have countersunk all of the screws when we built our deck. As the wood settles (and in our area, we have quakes) the boards move and eject the screws out just by a little bit, but enough to stub your toe, cut your foot and trip. If the holes bother you, simply fill them in, but your contractor thought ahead by counter sinking with safety in mind.
The nails should be below the top of the wood. I would fill the holes myself, a contractor is most likely going to charge you for the labor and it’s not that hard. If your deck is stained you need to buy a stain-able wood filler like Minwax stain-able wood filler.
Using filler:
Filler usually comes in a putty that you use a trowel to fill in the holes.
Sand with a fine grit sandpaper to make it smooth with the rest of the deck
Look at the instruction for dry time
Then stain/paint as you would like.
Total material cost will probably be less than $30 and can be done by someone who has no experience.
The nails should be “set” otherwise they will present a tripping hazard or the uncomfortable possibility of stepping on hot nails.
The contractor has an obligation to set the nails, but if you want the nail holes filled, I suggest that you take on that task. It is relatively fast and easy process.
What they done was use a nail gun that shoots nails by air pressure and sounds like pressure was a little to high. But no one normally fills the holes, if its treated lumber it wont hurt anything but it will be up to you I think.