In a crowded field like the deck-building industry, Dave Lyons prides himself on delivering high-quality, custom decks that enhance outdoor living spaces and provide homeowners with years of enjoyment. 

As owner of Archadeck of Delaware, Lyons knows that beyond the craftsmanship and skill he and his team employ, truly understanding a customer’s wants and needs is paramount to a successful project. 

“From what I’ve heard from some customers, other deck builders tend to be cookie cutter and they tell homeowners, ‘We are going to build the deck this way and you are going to like it,’” Lyons says. “That is not us. We are much more customized and try to accommodate the customer so the finished result is exactly what they envisioned.”

We spoke to Lyons more about what helps separate Archadeck apart and the key to combining aesthetics with functionality. 

I’ve been to houses that have decks where the railing ends in the middle of a window, which is not great [to say the least]. You need to make the deck bigger or slide it to the left or right a little bit. You definitely don’t want the railing to end up at a window. 

And with composite decking, the boards come 12-feet, 16-feet and 20-feet long. There are some contractors that will try to butt them together, which is not a good idea. Typically, composite deck boards move a lot, they expand and contract. If they are butted together, they’ll either pop up because they are too tight, or they will slide apart and no longer touch the joists that they are supposed to be sitting on because they are not tight enough. 

When I’m designing a deck, some of the things are just for aesthetics, but usually I am trying to design something that gets the most out of the composite deck boards because they are expensive and so we don’t want to throw very much of it away. 

Most people, what they want does not match up to what they want to spend. So I’ll design what they want, and I’ll design something for what they want to spend. And I might design something in the middle, if it makes sense. Again, I’m trying to give them what they want while trying to stay within their budget. 

Patios usually are less expensive than a composite deck, for instance. So, if you have a composite deck and you want to then do a step down and have a lower deck that is six inches off the ground, I would suggest making that a patio instead because it’s going to save you thousands of dollars. A lot of people change their mind when you start throwing around numbers like that.

A lot of my competitors are “Chuck in a truck,” a guy who’s working out of the back of his pickup truck. He’s probably going to be a low price, and you may get good work—maybe. But he probably doesn’t have workers’ compensation insurance. He also doesn’t have anything to lose, he can pick up his tools and drive away and not worry about it. 

Then there’s the bigger companies, most of them don’t have any real employees. They hire this Chuck in the truck guy to be your subcontractor. They’re not really worried about the quality of the work because their focus is on sales training and making sure their salesmen know how to close deals. They want to do 300 projects a year, and if 10% of them go bad, it works out in the numbers. 

I rarely use subcontractors. Most of my subcontractors are some kind of specialty trade, like the plumber, electrician, painter, etc. If we’re doing your project, my employees are going to be on the job site doing the majority of the work.

Published (and copyrighted) in House & Home, Volume 25, Issue 12 (March/April 2026)
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