Jeff Wiska will tell you straight: the only regret he has about his new deck is that he waited so long to build it.
That’s not false modesty. Jeff spent 30 years in the building materials industry. He knows Trex technology inside and out. He’s toured their manufacturing plant in Winchester, Virginia—more than once. If anyone was qualified to make this call earlier, it was him.
And still, he waited. Life gets in the way. Priorities change. The old deck is functional enough and your grateful you have a deck. You tell yourself you’ll get to it.
Then one day you look around, and your grandchildren are coming over every Sunday for dinner, and you realize: this deck isn’t big enough for the life you’re trying to live on it.
That’s when Jeff, in close cooperation with his wife Kim, finally made the call.
The Deck You Have vs. The Dream Deck You Could Have
The Wiskas’ original deck was built when his house went up in 1998. Six hundred square feet of early-generation Trex—four colors, the natural series—modest, practical, good enough for the time.
Good enough stopped being good enough somewhere along the way. It wasn’t a dramatic moment. It was a slow accumulation of Sunday dinners where the table felt a little crowded, of summer evenings that ended earlier than they should have because there wasn’t quite enough space to spread out, of a lake view that deserved a better seat.
“As you get older,” Jeff says, “you find yourself making life’s memories for your family, your friends, and yourself. Every Sunday we have an open invitation for our children and our grandchildren to come over. Family events are made on your deck.
“When you’re younger, you do a small deck, as economical as possible. You get to that point in life where it’s like, I want the finer things. I’ve worked hard my entire life. It’s an investment, financially and emotionally, It’s not an expense.”
That shift in thinking—from expense to investment—is the moment everything changes. The question stops being what does this cost , and starts being what is this worth .
For Jeff and his family, the answer was clear.
You know what you want. You just can’t draw it yet.
Here’s what most people discover when they sit down to plan a serious deck project: they have a vision, not a blueprint.
Jeff and Kim knew they wanted more space. They knew they wanted to spend time outside. They had a general sense of the deck they’d been imagining.
What they didn’t have was the ability to translate that feeling into a design…and more importantly, he didn’t know what he didn’t know.
That’s where MANS came in. Working with MANS designers and Woodcraft, the contractor the MANS team connected him with, Jeff went from vague notion to something he genuinely hadn’t imagined.
The team came back with options he hadn’t considered: a covered section with a roof, rolling shutters for weather flexibility, brick pillars, a rain escape system underneath that keeps the lower level dry for outdoor entertaining even when it’s raining. Stamped concrete below, 1,500 square feet of premium Trex above.
“We knew what we wanted in theory,” Jeff says. “But I had no idea how to put it on paper, how to visualize it. They exceeded our expectations with the wow factor. There’s no way I would have ever been able to visualize the way it looks. I needed someone who does this for a living.”
The MANS design process isn’t about selling you a deck. It’s about showing you the deck you couldn’t quite picture on your own. Then letting you choose.
As Jeff recalls it…
You say, “Here’s what I love. Here’s the feel I’m after.”
The folks at MANS say, “Here are five options. Which one stops you?”
You say, “This one. Can we tweak this part?”
And then it gets built exactly the way you want it.
Construction that Doesn’t Keep You Up at Night
Anyone who has hired a contractor has also had the experience of wishing they hadn’t. The missed appointments. The half-finished work left over a weekend. The sinking feeling that you need to inspect every corner of your own property, just to stay on top of what’s happening.
In fact, they were prepared for all of that. They didn’t get any of it.
“A lot of times in construction, you feel like you have to look over your shoulder,” he says. “What I found with these guys, they were on top of it. They were professional. It actually was a pleasant experience. Not a frustrating one…not in the least.”
That’s not luck. It’s what happens when a company like MANS takes seriously the idea that they are only as good as the contractors they work with. The Mans extended family of designers and consultants connects homeowners with contractors who have a track record of doing things right—the kind of builders Jeff describes not as deck builders, but as artists . People who take pride in the fact that no two decks are ever the same.
“They build hundreds of them,” Jeff says, “and every single one of them is different…built specifically for the family who will be putting it to use to live their own little slice of the American dream.”
First Impressions…Lasting Impact
The deck was finished. Jeff walked out to look at it. He had tears in his eyes.
Not because of the Trex. Not because of the rain escape system or the stamped concrete or the 900 extra square feet.
He was thinking about his father. His father-in-law. The relatives who had been to the old house, who had sat on the old deck, who were no longer here to see what it had become.
“I remember thinking to myself: I really wish they could just see how beautiful this deck is. I’m standing on their shoulders, in a lot of ways. They worked so hard. I’m sure they dreamed that someday one of the generations would be able to have something like this. And I’m the lucky one who gets to live it. Truly…the American dream…manifest in an outdoor deck.”
That’s what a deck is, at its best. It’s not lumber and composite boards and structural hardware. It’s the place where your family gathers. It’s the place you built for the people you love, using everything the people before you worked to give you. It’s where a lifetime of memories are made.
Jeff sits on his deck now with his dog in the afternoon and takes a nap. He and Kim share a quiet moment together. The family comes over on Sundays. They look out at the lake.
“It’s my happy spot,” he says. “I totally unwind. I totally relax. I don’t need to go across the world. I don’t need anything like that. I just enjoy my home.”
Someday Might Just Be Today
If you’re sitting on a deck that’s smaller than your life, or staring at aging boards and telling yourself you’ll get to it, or even trying to envision the deck out back that doesn’t yet exist, Jeff has two things to say.
First: “Do it. You will not regret it. The only thing you’ll regret is not doing it sooner.”
Second: “Go all in. Don’t spare expense. Don’t nickel and dime it. You’re going to spend years of your life on this deck, making memories that will outlast the investment.”
“Bigger is better,” he says. “And hire the best in class to help you vision it, design it, and build it.”
When you’re ready to start, MANS can help you figure out the details : the design, the right contractor, composite or natural wood …all of the options you haven’t thought of yet.
That’s the whole point. You don’t need to know what you need. You just need to walk in the door.
Ready to build the deck your family deserves?
Visit manslumber.com/products/decking to begin and to connect with a Mans designer and explore the contractors they work with. OR BETTER YET , or stop into any of our six Southeast Michigan locations and bring your ideas. Even if you can’t quite describe them yet.
You bring your vision…we’ll bring it to life!
