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By Radu Oprea, Owner, Wolf Spirit Deck · Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852 · 2020 Calamos Ct, Suite 200, Naperville, IL 60563 · Updated September 2026 When someone calls from a house on Sleight, Brainard, or Columbia, the first question usually isn’t about boards or railings. It’s some version of “Am I even allowed to build a deck here?” They’ve heard stories. A neighbor waited months on a porch. Someone got told no on their windows. So they assume the Historic Preservation Commission is going to pick apart a backyard deck too. For most backyard decks in the district, that’s not how it works. The front porch is a different story. Here’s how the review actually […]

By Radu Oprea, Owner, Wolf Spirit Deck · Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852 · 2020 Calamos Ct, Suite 200, Naperville, IL 60563 · Updated September 2026 Most of our front stoop calls come in March. The snow finally melts and someone notices a crack running across the top step, or gray chips flaking off the edges, or a puddle sitting against the foundation that was never there before. By then the stoop has usually been going downhill for three or four winters. The question is almost always the same: patch it, pour a new one, or do something different? I should say up front that we build composite porches, and we don’t pour concrete. So I’m […]

Every September we get the same call. Somebody bought a Solo Stove at the end of summer, the evenings finally cooled off, and now they are standing on a two year old Trex deck wondering whether lighting it is going to cost them a board. The short answer is yes, with real conditions attached. The longer answer is that the conditions most people worry about are not the ones that actually matter, and there is a Naperville rule on this that almost nobody knows about until a fire truck shows up in the cul de sac. Let us do the fire department part first, because it changes the whole conversation. What Naperville actually says about […]

There is one Home Depot in Naperville, at 2920 Audrey Ave off Ogden, and we are in the lumber aisle there more often than we would like to admit. Usually it is for fasteners, a bag of concrete, or a couple of PT 2x8s we came up short on. Occasionally it is because a homeowner met us in the parking lot with a photo on their phone asking whether the boards on the rack are the same ones we would put on their deck. Sometimes yes. Often no. And the reason why is worth explaining, because most people pricing a deck start exactly where you did: standing in front of a rack of deck boards, […]

By Radu Oprea, Owner, Wolf Spirit Deck. Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852. Naperville office: 2020 Calamos Ct, Suite 200. Published August 2026. A homeowner south of 63rd called us in June about a 16 by 20 deck off the back of her house. Nice flat yard, mature yard, no drama. Then she mentioned that the low corner near the fence turns into a pond every spring and takes about four days to drain. That one sentence changed the whole project. Not the design. The paperwork, the footings, and about six weeks of schedule. Here is the thing most people get wrong about building near water in Downers Grove. They assume the question is whether they are […]