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By Radu Oprea, owner of Wolf Spirit Deck. Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852. Naperville office: 2020 Calamos Ct, Suite 200. I have dug footings in a lot of Naperville backyards. After enough of them, you learn that the dirt changes more than people expect across a town this size. A deck I build for a house off Ogden Avenue and a deck I build for a house three miles south near the DuPage River are not the same job below the surface, even if the deck on top looks identical. Most homeowners never think about this. They get a quote, they pick a board color, and they assume the part nobody sees is standardized. It mostly […]

By Radu Oprea, Founder of Wolf Spirit Deck Every year around mid-June, the phone calls change. The spring calls are about design and decking colors. The June calls start the same way: “We love the deck you built us, but we can’t sit on it after seven o’clock.” It is always the mosquitoes. I have built decks across Naperville and the surrounding suburbs for more than a decade, and I have watched a lot of beautiful decks sit empty on perfect summer evenings because nobody planned for the bugs. So before you spend money on a screen room or a fancy cover, I want to walk you through what actually works here, what doesn’t, and […]

By Radu Oprea, owner of Wolf Spirit Deck (Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852) People are usually surprised when we steer them away from wood. We build decks for a living. A wood deck is cheaper to put up, which means a smaller invoice and an easier sale, so you’d think we’d push it. We don’t, at least not for most homes here. After enough years building across Hinsdale and the towns around it, I’ve watched too many beautiful new wood decks turn gray and splintery by their third or fourth winter. So when someone calls us as their deck builders in Hinsdale and asks for a wood deck, the first thing we do is ask what […]

By Radu Oprea, Owner, Wolf Spirit Deck · Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852 · Naperville, IL · Last updated: June 2026 Almost every La Grange homeowner who asks us about a louvered pergola starts the same way: they sat on a finished deck in late July, the sun was brutal by 2 p.m., and the deck they spent good money on was sitting empty half the day. A louvered pergola is usually the fix they’re circling. It’s also the single biggest “is this worth it” decision I get asked about, so here’s the honest version, costs and tradeoffs included. What a louvered pergola actually is A traditional wood pergola gives you partial shade through fixed slats […]

By Radu Oprea, Owner, Wolf Spirit Deck · Illinois Contractor License #TGC119852 · Naperville, IL · Last updated: July 2026 I build decks for a living, and hiring a contractor still strikes me as one of the more nerve-racking things a homeowner takes on. You hand a near-stranger a five-figure check and trust them to bolt something onto your house that your kids will be running across all summer. Most of the folks I meet in La Grange have already been burned once, or they know a neighbor two doors down who was. So this is the post I keep wishing homeowners had read before they picked up the phone. Below are the questions I […]