Big Decks

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Big Decks, Landscape Company, 4314 Medical Pky, Austin, TX.

09/01/2026

A piece of Texas limestone doesn't ask to be noticed. It just holds.

Cut from the same ground it ends up sitting on. It knows the heat, the freezes, the way the light moves across Central Texas by August.

That's the thing about a material drawn from the land. It carries an authority nothing poured in a factory can fake.

Set right, limestone ages soft. Warm underfoot. It settles into a yard instead of fighting it.

What comes from the ground, lasts in it.

Austin built.

08/24/2026

Your deck has been baking since May.

By mid-July, the boards have already given up a real amount of their surface oil. You can see it in the color shift, the faint gray creeping in at the edges, the way the grain starts to open up on the south-facing runs.

Austin surface temps on unfinished wood push past 130°F this month. That's the range where lignin breaks down and the oil layer that's been protecting the boards since spring evaporates faster than the wood can hold it.

The deck isn't damaged yet. It's mid-transition. Actively drying.

That in-between window is exactly when a penetrating oil like Cutek Extreme does its best work. It soaks into thirsty wood. It stabilizes the boards before they move, check, and start losing fastener grip.

Wait until October and you're not maintaining a deck anymore. You're chasing one.

Real wood. Caught in time.

📍 Austin, TX

08/21/2026

98 degrees outside. The sauna is already half-heated before you open the door.

That's the thing about July in Austin. The ambient heat does most of the work, which makes the cold plunge on the other side hit harder than it ever will in October. Sharper contrast. Faster reset. The ritual finally makes sense.

We build the bathing setup into the deck footprint, not bolted on beside it. Sauna, plunge, outdoor shower, drainage paths, and the framing under all of it sized for the water weight. One integrated structure in real wood, not a kit dropped on pavers.

Right now is when homeowners feel exactly what they're missing. You walk in from the backyard, the AC hits, and the whole loop you didn't take is obvious.

Peak season is short. The build isn't.

📍 Austin, TX

08/19/2026

Sauna first, or cold plunge first.

The Scandinavians say heat then cold. Every ex-athlete in Austin swears the opposite. Both camps will die on this hill.

What we know: it only works if the setup lets you move between them without thinking about it. Sauna one step out. Plunge three steps from that. Cedar underfoot the whole way.

If you have to walk across gravel in flip-flops to get from one to the other, you're not running a ritual. You're running errands.

Build the sequence into the deck. Then argue about the order.

08/18/2026

The OG 4x12 profile runs long and continuous.

The nail heads stay exposed.

One steel fastener sunk into a wide field of Douglas fir grain. No plugs, no cover caps. We didn't pretend the deck floated into place on its own.

The nail head is the signature. It says a person set that board, drove that fastener, and let the work show.

Douglas fir, sloped to drain, finished in penetrating Cutek Extreme oil. Built to sit through Austin heat and Hill Country freezes without hiding what it's made of.

The mark stays.

Austin built. Real wood.

08/17/2026

A sauna dropped in the corner of a yard and a sauna built into the deck are two different things to live with.

One you visit. The other you use.

The setups people actually reach for on a Tuesday night aren't the prettiest ones. They're the ones where the footprint was planned before the framing went in.

Four things decide whether you use it or just look at it:

Footprint. The bathing structure sits inside the deck, not next to it. Same walking surface, same level, no step-off into gravel or grass in wet feet.

Drainage. Cold plunges and outdoor showers move real water. A 100-gallon plunge is 830 pounds before anyone gets in, and every gallon has to go somewhere that isn't your foundation. Slope, French drain, service access. Planned on paper, not solved later.

Heat source. Austin summers make wood-fired saunas a summer-evening-only build. HUUM electric heat runs on a schedule. If you want it Tuesday at 9pm in August, the answer is electric with a dedicated circuit.

Sequence. Shower to sauna to plunge to bench. That order dictates where each piece sits, where the towels live, and how far you walk in bare feet. Get the sequence right and the whole thing feels obvious.

None of this is visible in the finished photos. All of it is the reason the deck gets used.

Real wood. Built to use.

08/14/2026

Two boards. Both outlast the house. The difference shows up in August.

Ipe is ironwood. Class A fire rating, so dense it sinks in water, naturally dark, pre-drill every screw. It's been the gold standard for thirty years and it's still the closest thing to stone underfoot.

Thermally modified ash is different. Cooked at 400°F until the sugars are gone, so rot has nothing to eat. No chemicals. Lower carbon footprint. And it doesn't move when Austin swings from 40% humidity to 90% in a weekend.

That last part matters here. Ipe is stable, but nothing is truly still in a Texas summer. Thermo ash barely notices.

Pick Ipe for the darkest natural tone and a board that feels permanent the second you step on it. Pick thermo for a deck that stays flat, works easier, and lands lighter on the planet.

Both are real wood. Neither is Trex.

Austin built.

08/12/2026

"Thermally modified" sounds synthetic. It's the opposite.

The board goes into a kiln. Heat and steam cook the sugars out of the wood. Sugars are what rot feeds on. Sugars are what make a board swell, cup, and warp when Austin goes from 90% humidity to 105 degrees in the same week.

Cook them out, and the wood stops reacting. No chemicals. No preservatives. No plastic pretending to be lumber.

What's left is real wood that holds its shape through a Texas summer and a Hill Country cold snap. Thermo ash. Thermo spruce. Same tree, quieter board.

People see it on a quote and assume it's a composite. It's the least synthetic option on the page.

Real wood. Cooked, not coated.

08/10/2026

160 degrees. That's what a dark composite deck reads on an Austin July afternoon.

The board under your feet isn't a style pick. It's a heat decision, a humidity decision, and a finish decision, whether you thought about it that way or not.

Real wood runs cooler underfoot because it doesn't hold heat like plastic does. Thermally modified boards keep their shape at 90% humidity while low-grade softwoods cup and crack. And dense hardwoods like Ipe don't take a film stain, they take a penetrating oil like Cutek Extreme, applied to clean dry wood, working from the inside out.

Three things most homeowners find out the hard way in August.

Swipe through. Then walk out on your deck and see which one you're standing on.

Austin built. Real wood.

08/07/2026

Bet you think composite runs maybe 10 or 15 degrees hotter than real wood on a July afternoon.

Try 40.

Dark composite decking hits 160°F+ in direct Austin sun. Real wood on the same afternoon sits 20 to 40 degrees cooler. Same yard. Same sun. Different physics.

Composite is plastic and wood flour wrapped in a cap. Plastic stores heat. Wood breathes. That's not marketing, that's material science.

So the July test isn't whether the deck looks good in the showroom. It's whether you can stand on it barefoot at 4pm without flinching.

Real wood. Built for the climate it lives in.

Address

4314 Medical Pky
Austin, TX
78756

Website

http://www.bigdecks.co/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Big Decks posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Featured

ATX Seamless Gutters
9442 N Capital of Texas Hwy
M&M painting and renovation
78753