By Radu Oprea, Owner, Wolf Spirit Deck. Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852. Naperville office: 2020 Calamos Ct, Suite 200. Last updated: August 2026.
The call usually goes well for about four minutes.
Someone in Ashbury or off 95th Street tells me their deck frame is solid, the boards are just tired and gray, and they want composite laid over the top. I agree that resurfacing is often the right move. We book a visit. Then I get there, pry up one board near the middle, hook my tape on the side of a joist, and pull it to the next one.
Twenty four inches.
That is the moment the conversation changes, and it is the single most common reason a resurfacing quote in Naperville turns into a bigger number than the homeowner expected. So here is the whole thing, explained the way I explain it standing in someone’s backyard.
What “on center” actually means
Joist spacing is measured center to center, not edge to edge. If your joists sit 16 inches on center, and a joist is an inch and a half thick, the open gap between them is about 14 and a half inches. Builders shorthand this as OC.
Most decks built around Naperville in the late nineties and through the 2000s were framed at 24 inches on center. That was not sloppy work. It was correct for the material. Five quarter pressure treated decking is stiff enough to span 24 inches without any noticeable give, so framing wider saved lumber and labor without hurting anything. If your deck came with the house in a subdivision built in that era, 24 inch spacing is the default assumption I walk in with.
Composite changes the math.
Composite is not a structural material
This is the part that surprises people. Composite boards do not carry themselves the way wood does. They are a surface. The frame underneath does all the work, and composite asks more of that frame than wood ever did.
Two reasons. Composite is more flexible than a piece of pressure treated lumber of the same thickness, so it deflects sooner over an open span. And composite moves more with temperature, expanding and contracting along its length through an Illinois summer in ways wood does not.
Wood also hides a multitude of framing sins. A joist that sits an eighth of an inch proud gets absorbed by the board on top of it. Composite telegraphs that high spot straight to the surface, where you will see it every evening for the next thirty years.
Put composite on a 24 inch frame and you get a deck that feels springy underfoot near the center of each bay. Not dangerous, usually. Just wrong. People describe it as bouncy, or say it feels cheap, and they cannot work out why because the boards themselves cost a fortune. Then the warranty claim gets denied, because installing outside the manufacturer’s framing spec voids it. I covered that failure mode along with nine others in our post on composite decking mistakes.
The spacing your boards actually require
For standard composite boards run perpendicular to the joists, the maximum is 16 inches on center. Run them diagonally at 45 degrees and the effective span across the frame gets longer, so the requirement tightens to 12 inches. Stair treads need 12 inches or less, because stepping down puts more force through a tread than walking across a deck does. Trex publishes all of this in its guide to installing and spacing deck joists, and TimberTech and Deckorators land in the same place.
There is one exception worth knowing, because a contractor may quote you on it. Trex’s 2×6 profile is rated for 24 inch spacing in residential use at 100 psf or under. It is a thicker, heavier board and it is not what most people picture when they picture a composite deck. If someone tells you your 24 inch frame is fine as is, ask which specific board they are speccing and ask to see the span chart for it. That is a fair question and any honest builder will answer it in about ten seconds.
Picture framing the perimeter, or running a herringbone or inlay pattern, tightens things further and adds blocking. Those are design decisions with structural consequences, which is why we settle them at the drawing stage rather than on install day.
So we add joists. How bad is that?
Less bad than people fear, and more involved than it sounds.
The fix is to install a new joist in the middle of each existing bay. On a 24 inch frame that gives you 12 inch spacing, which is tighter than the 16 you strictly need but is what the geometry produces. You cannot land at exactly 16 by splitting 24, and re-laying the whole frame to a true 16 inch layout means tearing it out, at which point you are rebuilding.
Each new joist needs a hanger at the ledger, a mechanical connection at the beam, and blocking. That last one matters more than homeowners expect. Blocking keeps joists from rolling or twisting under load, and it is required, not optional.
Then there is flatness. Once the new joists are in, we run a level across every three joists looking for high spots, and plane the proud ones down. Skip that step and the composite will show you exactly where you skipped it.
There is also a limit at the ledger. The ledger board is bolted to your house and already has fasteners in it. Doubling the number of joists means doubling the hangers landing on that ledger, and sometimes the existing fastener pattern gets in the way. We work that out before quoting, not during demo.
When I tell people to rebuild instead
I would rather lose the resurfacing sale than warranty a deck I know will disappoint. A frame that fails on spacing alone is usually fixable. A frame that fails on any of the following is not worth reframing:
The ledger is bolted through the siding into the rim joist with no flashing behind it. This was common on Naperville builds before the mid 2000s and it is the reason an old deck can rot the house it is attached to. Adding joists to a frame that is quietly funneling water into your band board is money set on fire.
The joists themselves fail an awl test. We poke the wood with a pick. Firm means structure. Soft means rot, and rot does not stop where you can see it.
The beam or footings cannot carry the extra load. Doubling joist count adds dead load and often changes how load reaches the posts. On sloped lots near the river this comes up more often, for reasons I got into in the post on why footings differ across Naperville soil. Sometimes the honest answer is steel framing and a fresh start, the way we handled the elevated build on helical piles.
Here is the pattern I would tell you to expect before I ever see your yard. If your deck went in with a subdivision built between the late nineties and the mid 2000s, assume 24 inch spacing until a tape measure says otherwise, because that was the correct and normal way to frame for wood decking at the time. And if the deck predates about 2004, assume the ledger flashing needs looking at too. Those two things travel together often enough that I check the ledger before I bother measuring anything, since a bad ledger settles the question on its own.
The permit question, because this is Naperville
Adding joists is structural work. It is not swapping boards, and the City of Naperville treats it accordingly.
We build to the 2021 International Residential Code here, and a reframe means the drawings need to show the new joist layout, the hangers, and the blocking. Expect a framing inspection before any composite goes down. If a contractor tells you a reframe and resurface can happen without the city seeing it, that tells you something useful about the contractor. The city tends to catch unpermitted structural work at resale, and by then it is your problem and not theirs. The full process, including current review times, is in our write up of the Naperville permit process.
If your subdivision has an architectural review board, adding joists usually does not trigger it, since nothing visible changes. Board color and railing style still will.
Check it yourself in five minutes
You do not need me for the first answer.
Find a spot near the middle of the deck, away from the house and away from the stairs. Lift one board. Two screws, or a pry bar if it is face nailed. Hook a tape measure on the left edge of one joist and measure to the left edge of the next one. Whatever number you get is your on center spacing.
If it reads 16, you are in good shape and a straightforward resurface is realistic. If it reads 24, budget for reframing or a rebuild before you fall in love with a board color. If it reads something odd like 19.2, you have a frame laid out on a five joist per eight foot module, which turns up occasionally on older builds and needs a look in person.
While the board is up, push a small screwdriver or an awl into the top edge of the joist. If it sinks in easily, spacing is no longer your main problem.
What this costs
Reframing sits between resurfacing and rebuilding, and the price depends almost entirely on deck size, ledger condition, and how much of the beam and footing structure has to change. For context on the wider spread, we published three anonymized Naperville bids side by side so you can see where contractors differ.
Some rough arithmetic to set expectations. A new composite deck in Naperville runs about $60 to $95 per square foot installed. A clean resurface over a frame that already passes, where we pull boards and lay composite on what is there, lands near a third of that. Reframing sits in the middle, because you are buying new framing lumber and hardware on top of the resurfacing labor, and framing materials alone generally run $9 to $13 per square foot before anyone picks up a tool.
The practical result is that reframing narrows the gap between resurfacing and rebuilding. On a small deck the gap narrows so far that rebuilding wins outright, since you get new footings, a new ledger, and a fresh thirty year structure for not much more money. On a large deck with a sound ledger and good footings, reframing usually still comes out well ahead. That crossover point is the actual thing we work out on site, and it moves depending on deck size, height off the ground, and how much of the beam and post structure has to change.
Every number above is a planning figure. We measure your yard before we give you a real one.
Questions we get about this
Can I install composite over my existing deck boards instead? No. It traps moisture against the old surface, adds height at your door threshold, and voids the board warranty. The old surface comes off.
My frame is 24 inches on center. Is my current deck unsafe? Almost certainly not, if it was built for wood decking. It was correct for what is on it. The problem only appears when you change the surface material.
Can you sister boards to the existing joists instead of adding new ones? Sistering strengthens a joist. It does not reduce the distance between joists, which is the actual issue. It is the right fix for a cracked or sagging joist and the wrong fix for wide spacing.
Does 12 inch spacing make the deck better than 16? Slightly stiffer underfoot, yes. It is not a reason to reframe a sound 16 inch deck. It is just what you end up with when you split 24 inch bays.
How long does a reframe add to the job? On a typical Naperville deck it is a couple of extra days of framing work, since every new joist needs a hanger, a beam connection, and blocking. The bigger schedule effect is the framing inspection, which has to happen before any composite goes down and depends on the city’s queue rather than on us. Permitting timelines run separately and are covered in the permit post above.
Do I need a permit to resurface if the frame is not touched? Board replacement alone is a narrower case than structural work, but Naperville’s requirements depend on what else you touch, including railings and stairs. Ask the city, or ask us and we will confirm before you start.
If you want us to look at it
We will come out, pull a board, measure the spacing, check the ledger and the joists, and tell you honestly whether you are looking at a resurface, a reframe, or a rebuild. Free, and no pressure to book anything.
Wolf Spirit Deck 2020 Calamos Ct, Suite 200, Naperville, IL 60563 (312) 765-3998 Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852 Serving 60540, 60563, 60564, and 60565, plus Aurora, Lisle, Plainfield, Wheaton, and the western suburbs.
Request a free on site quote, or read more about what deck resurfacing involves and how we work with Naperville homeowners. If you are still choosing boards, our five year inspection of cedar, Trex, and TimberTech decks across the same zip codes is the place to start.
