Questions & Answers
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the things Twin Cities homeowners ask us most. If yours isn’t covered below, reach out and Dan will gladly walk you through it.
We’re based in Hastings, MN, and serve the Greater Twin Cities Area.
Northern Outdoor Living is owned by Dan Pettit. Dan is meticulous, collaborative, and personally invested in every project — clients often describe him as a designer who brings a vision to life far beyond what they imagined.
Our work has been recognized at the highest levels of the trade. At the 2022 NADRA National+ Deck Competition — the continent-wide juried awards program run by the North American Deck & Railing Association — two of our signature builds, Tree of Life and Split Rock Lighthouse, earned six placements across multiple categories, including two 1st-place finishes and a 5th Place Overall, National.
Dan was also named Deck Specialist of the Year 2023 by Deck Specialist magazine.
Northern Outdoor Living is a member of Owens Corning’s Pro Build Team, a Deckorators Certified Elite builder (Deckorators’ highest contractor tier, carrying factory-level training and enhanced manufacturer warranty coverage), and a member of NADRA, working to the association’s safety standards and code of ethics.
Every project is custom, so pricing depends on the scope, design, and materials involved. At your initial consultation and site visit, you’ll receive a preliminary ballpark estimate based on the current scope of work. Once the design is finalized, we provide a detailed proposal with contract pricing for the agreed-upon work.
Clients frequently note that our projects come in on-budget with no surprise costs.
Our process has four stages. First, an initial consultation and site visit to discuss ideas, layout, and vision, with a preliminary ballpark estimate. Second, design and project development, which begins with a $1,000 design earnest deposit and includes full measurements, digital modeling, custom 3D renderings, and collaborative revisions.
Third, we present a final scope and pricing proposal with finalized scope, renderings, and contract pricing. Fourth, scheduling and approval — a 10% deposit is required upon signing, and your agreement outlines milestone payments and timelines.
Northern Outdoor Living has around 51 Google reviews, overwhelmingly five stars. Clients consistently praise Dan’s design vision, meticulous craftsmanship, flawless fit and finish, and perfect board alignment.
Recurring themes include projects completed on schedule and on budget with no surprise costs, clean worksites, and daily communication. One client called Dan “the Picasso of the builder world.”
Northern Outdoor Living designs and builds complete outdoor living spaces — not just decks. Owner Dan Pettit and his team create one-of-a-kind, art-driven backyard environments engineered to last generations, including custom decks, multi-zone outdoor rooms, feature and privacy walls, integrated lighting, sun rooms, screened porches, pergolas, outdoor kitchens, fire pits, and paver patios.
We treat a deck as living art — an expression of design that facilitates lifelong enjoyment and unforgettable experiences — where craftsmanship, engineering, and light art come together.
Our multi-zone builds can include dining and lounge areas, hot tub surrounds, fire pits and custom fire tables, feature and privacy walls, custom in-house plasma-cut metal lattice, stone-clad knee walls, integrated app- or remote-controllable lighting, and paver-style deck surfaces with wide picture-frame borders.
Every build is fully skirted and trimmed, so no raw framing is visible anywhere.
Our custom feature walls can include fiber-optic twinkling starscapes, color-changing backlighting, hand-etched aluminum scenes, illuminated deck treads and border boards, and dimmable lounge lighting. On our Witch Tree project, we hand-etched an aluminum sunset that actually “sets,” with fiber-optic stars and color-changing leaves.
Each effect is custom-designed to reflect a theme meaningful to the homeowner, turning a privacy wall into a one-of-a-kind piece of living art.
Yes. We engineer our light-art walls to be serviced for decades. On the Split Rock project, a hidden network of conduit chases carries every fixture down through a sealed, watertight wall to a dry-space cavity beneath the deck, and lattice panels pop out without tools — so every light can be serviced or replaced for years to come.
Yes. Our integrated lighting is designed to be controllable by app or remote, letting you shift a space from a color-changing party mode to a serene, dimmed retreat at the touch of a button.
Our light-art walls can even run on multiple independent light engines — for example, one for stars and one for color-changing leaves — for layered, dynamic effects.
A fiber-optic feature wall is a custom light-art installation built into your outdoor space. For our Split Rock project, we created a 24-foot fiber-optic wall recreating the Split Rock Lighthouse, complete with a twinkling starscape, aurora-borealis backlighting, and a working 10-second flash beacon — even hidden zodiac constellations placed by the owners’ birthdays.
These walls double as privacy features and living works of art that transform how a space feels.
Owens Corning Lumber is manufactured to be dimensionally identical. That gives us a frame that’s straight, flat, and consistent from end to end, without the tapering, grading, and shimming wood framing requires.
A true substructure is what makes our intricate board work possible: diamond inlays, curves, picture-frame borders, and multi-width patterns that line up perfectly. It also enables spans and shapes that would have warped, sagged, or failed in a wood frame.
Yes, on specific request. Our default is Owens Corning Lumber framing with premium synthetic deck boards by brands like Deckorators, Eva-Last, TimberTech, and Wolf PVC, because that combination delivers a longer lifespan, greater consistency, and more freedom for ambitious designs. Wood is the exception, not the focus of our business.
Owens Corning Lumber carries a warranty of about 50–75 years, and residential applications are eligible for a lifetime warranty. Wood framing typically carries 10–20 years. Your deck boards carry their own manufacturer warranty, and we’ll review the specifics for the product you choose.
When the structure underneath is built to last that long, a deck stops being a maintenance item on a replacement clock. That’s why we call it a “forever deck.”
The Owens Corning Pro Build Team is a small, selective group of builders that Owens Corning invites to field-test and showcase its structural lumber and other building materials. Owens Corning invited Northern Outdoor Living to join based on its reputation and craftsmanship. Builders can’t just sign up.
For our clients, that means a frame built from a premium, non-organic structural product, backed by direct manufacturer support.
Owens Corning Lumber is a fully synthetic structural lumber made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) combined with Owens Corning glass-fiber technology. It contains no wood. We use it for the framing beneath your deck: the joists, beams, and substructure that carry everything above.
That matters because framing is usually the first part of a deck to fail. Wood framing absorbs moisture, loses strength, and rots, often long before the deck boards on top wear out. Owens Corning Lumber isn’t subject to any of that. It’s the default framing for every Northern Outdoor Living build, not an upsell.
Yes. During our design and project development phase, we produce digital modeling of your home, yard, and project area along with custom 3D renderings of the proposed design. This helps you clearly visualize the finished project within your actual environment before construction begins, and we collaborate on revisions to layout, materials, colors, railings, dimensions, and lighting.
Absolutely — personal, themed spaces are a signature of our work. Our Witch Tree project in Cottage Grove was built around the Witch Tree of Lake Superior, and our Split Rock project recreated the Split Rock Lighthouse for a proud Minnesota native.
Dan works collaboratively to root each design in something you love, then enhances it well beyond what most clients imagine.
We design outdoor spaces as a series of distinct “rooms” — for example, a dining area off the kitchen, an outdoor living room, a hot tub surround, and a lower fire pit patio — that flow together while each offering its own cozy, protected feel. Our Split Rock project transformed a small rotted platform into four distinct outdoor rooms wrapped around a single cohesive space.
We use feature walls, custom lattice, stone-clad knee walls, and overhead beam structures to divide and define zones, so the result feels like one great room broken into inviting nooks.
They’re as close to maintenance-free as an outdoor structure gets. The framing won’t rot, warp, or swell, and the deck boards we build with are engineered to resist fading, staining, and moisture. There’s no sanding, staining, or sealing on a yearly schedule. Occasional cleaning keeps everything looking its best.
Clients regularly describe our builds as maintenance-free and “the last deck we’ll ever have to buy.”
We build complete outdoor living spaces. Beyond custom decks and multi-zone outdoor rooms, we create feature and privacy walls, custom metal lattice, fiber walls, integrated lighting and light-art feature walls, sun rooms, screened porches, pergolas, outdoor kitchens, fire pits and fire tables, and paver patios. We also take on some interior and specialty spaces such as spa rooms and custom builds.
We pair our Owens Corning Lumber framing with deck boards from the manufacturers we trust most:
- Deckorators’ mineral-based Voyage and Summit lines
- Eva-Last’s Pioneer and Apex lines
- TimberTech AZEK PVC
- Wolf PVC
Each has its own look, texture, and performance profile. We’ll walk you through samples during design and help you choose the one that best fits your space, style, and how you plan to use it.
Still Have a Question?
If something isn’t answered here, we’d love to hear from you. Share your project or your curiosity and Dan will walk you through the possibilities for your own outdoor living space.