Where We Build Decks in Greater Cleveland

Permit jurisdictions are not the same

This catches people out more than anything else on a deck project. The six communities we work in sit across two counties and several separate building departments, and the difference is weeks rather than days.

• Cleveland sits in Cuyahoga County and runs its own Department of Building and Housing out of City Hall, with a homeowner affidavit required alongside the permit application.
• Shaker Heights is Cuyahoga County and adds an Architectural Board of Review pass before its own Building Department will review the structural permit.
• Lakewood is Cuyahoga County and exempts a freestanding deck no more than 30 inches above grade from a building permit entirely, though anything taller or attached still needs one.
• Rocky River is Cuyahoga County with its own Building Department and setback map, and any lakefront bluff property may also need an Ohio Department of Natural Resources coastal erosion area permit.
• Avon Lake is the outlier, sitting in Lorain County with its own zoning code, and a zoning permit is reviewed before the building permit is issued.
• Beachwood is Cuyahoga County, with one Building Department handling both zoning and building review for the city.

We work out which one applies to your property before quoting, prepare the framing plan, submit it and meet the inspector at footing and at final. Where an area review board applies, that submission runs separately and on its own timetable.

Where the housing stock changes the deck

A design review before a nail is driven

Shaker Heights reviews a deck's materials, colour and street presence through its Architectural Board of Review before the building permit is even considered, on a city of large Tudor and Colonial Revival homes where roughly seventy percent of the streets sit inside a National Register historic district.

Tight, pre war lots close to the lake

Lakewood is Ohio's most densely populated suburb, built out almost entirely before 1940 on lots close to a tenth of an acre, where a low ground level deck under 30 inches skips the permit process entirely and composite suits the tight, low maintenance footprint most homes allow.

Bluffs, gorges and a receding shoreline

Rocky River splits between lakefront bluff lots under state coastal erosion rules and streets that wind down toward the shale cliffs of the Rocky River valley, so a stepped design or an under deck system often earns its place here more than almost anywhere else we build.

A different county, a wider rear yard

Avon Lake sits in Lorain County on the Lake Erie shoreline, where the zoning code caps an unenclosed deck at 35 percent of the required rear yard, and newer, more open subdivisions make covered structures and pergolas a common addition against still maturing landscaping.

Postwar homes, decades of decks already added

Beachwood grew up mainly from the 1950s through the 1980s, so a large share of our work here is bringing an existing midcentury ranch or split level's deck up to current guard and footing standards rather than building on a bare lot.