I need a deck on my house. It's a walk out basement and I have 2 sliding doors, one in the kitchen and one in the living room facing the road. If you step through them, you drop apprxo. 8' down. Can't afford to do both so I went to Mendards and they gave me a list of parts for a 12' wide by 10' long (out away from the house) just basic wood treated deck. Cost was $842. So, I called a person up who does decks for people in the area. He came today to look at the job and he wanted to do it by the hour. $35 per person. I'm uncomfortable with that as not knowing the total, I may not have enough money. Told him that I need it priced by the job. We talked about design and making it a bit different from what Menards' had it. Said he would get back with me. It is normal for people to pay by the hour for a job of this type?

I have a question about a low slope, metal roofed patio cover. I built a patio patio cover for a couple and it has a low slope, like maybe a 2/12, in a corner section of their house. Attached it to the house and it has support columns. Plywood for the decking. Ice and water membrane across the whole thing, tucked up under the starter strip of shingles on the house. I then bent flashing and covered from underneath the first row of shingles to the steel. One side is folded at 90° and covers a full uncut rib. The other side has the ribs every 9”, but I trimmed that out the same with the trim notched around the hi ribs. Used filler strips across the ribs under the trim. Lack jack along the trim to the starter strip, black jack the first course of shingle to the trim. Caulked the trim to the steel. I have one drip in about the center of the patio! I for for the life of me can not figure out how the water is getting underneath the steel, much less under the ice and water. One thing I have noticed and the shingles almost flatten out towards the eve, meaning they loose their pitch off the roof. This seems to allow water to wick back farther then I would think it could, it wouldn’t the blackjack stop this? Help, I’m at a loss here!