Deck Railing in Camp Washington, OH

On the end-of-row lots around Camp Washington (ZIP 45225) a deck guard very often runs back and finishes against the house, and on plenty of these the wall was painted before the deck ever went on. That post has been standing against the same strip of wall for twenty or thirty years, and when it comes off the strip is still there.

What it looks like depends on the wall. On paint it is a clean band of older, unfaded color where nothing weathered, which reads as brighter than everything around it. On brick it is a patch that never took the dirt the rest of the elevation did. On siding it is a line of clean material below a weathered face. In every case it is a hard-edged rectangle at eye level, at the exact point where people look to see how the guard meets the house, and it does not fade back in.

So it carries its own figure on the estimate, and the answer depends on what you want. Landing the new post in the same position covers it entirely, which is free where the spacing allows and is the neatest result. Otherwise it is a matter of making the wall good over that area, which on paint is straightforward and on old brick is a cleaning question rather than a painting one. What we would not do is leave it and say nothing, because it is the first thing anybody notices once the new guard is up.