200 sq ft Ipe Deck with Glass Railing in Burlington
About 200 square feet of ipe hardwood in Burlington, replacing a weathered deck on the same footprint, with glass railing in black aluminum posts, an ipe top rail and ipe stairs down to the existing paver walk.
Location
Burlington, Ontario
Size
About 200 square feet
Decking
Ipe hardwood
Railing
Glass in black aluminum posts
Top rail
Ipe, matching the deck
Scope
Old deck removed and rebuilt
What we built
Ipe is the top of the wood range, and the number that explains it is hardness.
On the Janka scale, which measures how much force it takes to press a steel ball into a board, ipe comes in at about 3,684. Western red cedar is 350. Treated pine is around 690. Ipe is roughly ten times harder than cedar and five times harder than the treated lumber most decks are built from. That is not a marketing difference, it is a different category of material.
What that buys you is a deck that does not dent under furniture, does not splinter underfoot and does not soften at the edges after a decade. Left alone it weathers to a silver grey like any wood. Oiled once a season it holds the deep brown in these photos. Both are valid, and it is worth deciding which one you want before the deck goes down rather than after.
The hardness is also why an ipe deck costs more to build than the board price alone suggests. Ipe will not take a nail. Every fastener is pre-drilled or the boards are hung on hidden clips, blades dull quickly and go through carbide rather than steel, and the offcuts are heavy enough that handling the material is slower than handling cedar. The labour is genuinely higher, and a quote that prices ipe like a softwood deck has not accounted for that.
The railing is glass in black aluminum posts with an ipe top rail. Frameless glass on spigots is the other way to do it and it suits a very modern house. On a brick home like this one, posts give the railing enough structure to read as part of the deck rather than a sheet of glass balanced on the edge, and running the top rail in ipe ties it back to the deck surface instead of leaving the railing as a separate black object.
The top rail being wood matters in use as well as in looks. It is the part of a railing you rest a hand or a drink on, and hardwood is warmer to touch than metal on either end of the season.
The stairs land on the paver walk that was already at the door. Reusing what is staying is most of the judgement in a rebuild, and the rise had to be worked out from the pavers upward so the bottom step is the same height as every other one on the flight.
The frame under it is conventional treated lumber, which is normal and correct. Hardwood goes on top where you see it and touch it. Spending the ipe budget on the surface and the railing rather than on framing that will never be looked at is the right call on a deck this size.
Pricing something similar? Our guide to what a deck costs in the GTA goes through it with 2026 prices per square foot.
The finished project
Before the rebuild
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