Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep. # 59 Crafting Success: Judy and Bruce's Outdoor Living Legacy at NJ Decks and Railings
Discover the heartwarming journey of Judy and Bruce from NJ Decks and Railings, as they share a legacy of passion and craftsmanship rooted in Ramsey, New Jersey. Bruce takes us back to his childhood, where his fascination with carpentry began by watching his father build with dedication and pride. Judy recounts her transformation from a stay-at-home mom to a pivotal force in the business, bringing her unique touch to sales consultations and estimates. Together, they've expanded beyond traditional deck building, embracing comprehensive outdoor living space designs like pergolas and outdoor kitchens, all while adapting to meet their clients' ever-changing needs. This episode promises insights into their family-run business's growth and the personal stories that fuel their success.
Prepare to be inspired by the world of outdoor living spaces! We delve into the modern appeal of awnings, comparing them with pergolas in terms of cost, functionality, and aesthetic value. Our conversation with Judy and Bruce shines a light on their versatile approach, accommodating diverse budgets and styles across New Jersey. They share vital tips on planning outdoor projects, considering permits, and adapting to environmental factors, especially with the recent surge in demand for personal outdoor retreats. Lastly, we spotlight NJ Decks Railings, a local business specializing in railings, and invite listeners to nominate their favorite businesses for future episodes, offering a unique opportunity to shine a light on local gems.
NJ Decks and Railings
Juday & Bruce Verblaauw
147 E Main St,
Ramsey, NJ 07446
(201) 327-7864
sales@njdecksandrailings.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Buddy, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast coming to you. Live from Bergen County, I am on the eastern part of Bergen, in Harrington Park, with the Bergen Neighbors Media Group Studios, and I am joined today by Judy and Bruce. Judy and Bruce are in Ramsey, new Jersey, so you know a couple of towns away, and they are the owners of NJ Deck and Railings, based in Ramsey, new Jersey. So welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you Good morning, yeah, good morning. So you know we were talking a little bit right before we went on air about your company and that you're called NJ Decks and Railings, but obviously you guys do a heck of a lot more than that. But tell us a little bit about the company, because you're second generation carpenters. You guys have been in business for many, many years. So why don't we go back? And if I could play some dramatic music, we'd go back in time 50 years. So how did you guys get into this business?
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure. So 1970, my dad was working for a carpenter and he decided it was time for him to go on his own and he started the business. It was just called Neil Verblau, Carpenter and Builder in the day, and I was six years old and you know waved to dad leaving in the morning in his pickup truck, Grew up, you know, enjoying what my dad did and that sort of thing. And so yeah, March of 1970, dad started out on his own.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow. You know, I, my brother-in-law, I'm from Long Island and my brother-in-law was a contractor and one weekend in the summer he was building a deck in somebody's backyard and he said, doug, do you want to pick up some extra money? I said, sure, I'll help. Oh, my God, I mean just digging the post holes by hand. My, my fingers were like this for like a day. I couldn't close my hands. They were just like you know that was and I. It was hot, I had a sunburn and we're carrying all the wood. It was a hard work. I got to say. Putting a deck is a is ,definitely a lot of hard work.
Speaker 4:Certainly uh hard work. I gotta say putting a deck is, uh is definitely a lot of hard work, certainly. Certainly digging the footings is probably the, the hardest part of it.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, doing it by hand. I mean, I'm sure you have. Maybe you still do it by hand, but maybe some machines help out a little bit. So so what? Um, so you see your dad going to work every day. You're, you're a little kid. Um, you know, we all thought our dads were heroes when we were young and you know you wish you would stay that way when your kids get to be teenagers, that they still look at you as heroes. But obviously you, you're inspired by what he did and I think, being a carpenter, it's great because you, you actually can make things you know with your hands and uh, so what was it that?
Speaker 4:at what point did you say you know, I want to get into this business with my dad sure, I guess, you know, as I grew a little more, you know dad bought me a little electric jigsaw and started giving me little, you know, bird houses to build and things, and then really start to see what it was like to actually build something with your hand and be able to stand back and, you know, feel that pride of I built that. And you know, yeah, I guess it just progressed from there. I just kept wanting to work with wood and uh, you know, and you know, following my dad's footsteps, yeah, yeah, so it's 1970.
Speaker 2:So, um, you know, fast forward, as he said, 50 years. And when did the company become, uh, nj Dex and Railings? Because I guess initially it was uh well, c for Blau or N for Blau.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is c Verblaauw and Sons LLC, but our DBA is NJ Decks and Railings.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:And I guess that came around back in 2004 or so. Yes, dad retired in 2001, and Bruce and I continued the business on and you know, at that point we're focusing on on just decks, and yeah, we're decks railings pergolas the whole kitchens, backyards. We're a design and build company now that we can design a whole outdoor living space for you, your whole backyard.
Speaker 2:So, judy, we, we talk. You know Bruce talked about how he got into the business. So what was your inspiration and what is it like being a family business?
Speaker 3:Well, I guess we've been married for a long time and I guess I started being a stay-at-home mom a little bit and started helping out a little bit in the office and started really enjoying working and um. And then I started going with bruce on some sales consultations and really enjoyed doing that and so as our daughter got older, I started just going out on the sales consultations by myself and I enjoy that. I do all the estimating and I I just love being part of the family business and I love that both of our girls are the third generation with us oh, wow, that's great.
Speaker 2:That's great. Um. So, yeah, so you, initially, you're building decks and you mentioned your. You guys have branched out into a lot of different things and you know one of the um I'll call it a trend, but you can correct me but you see it a lot on instagram and I see it in neighbors backyards are the pergolas and the outdoor kitchens. Oh yeah, so is that like? Is that still really popular? And then how did you guys go from being a carpenter building decks that were traditionally made of wood to then saying, okay, well, pergola is again traditionally made of wood. But then getting into, you know, hardscape and pool decks and then the outdoor patios, was this just something your clients asked you? Oh, by the way, do you do this as well?
Speaker 3:I guess yes, Some of that has come from the clients asking for it and seeing the need for it. As far as the stepping away from wood, it's due to the quality of the wood. These days Now, we're solely composite decking, steel framing. The pergolas are mostly like aluminum or or a vinyl uh right, oh, really okay.
Speaker 2:Okay. And there are some pergolas that have um, they can shut. They're kind of like yeah, yes, you can put a ceiling fan in there and make it like, uh, they've been very popular.
Speaker 4:you can open them and get sunlight, or you can close them. It's raining and you're dry underneath it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, you can make a, a whole outdoor area there with heaters and the fans and the lights.
Speaker 2:And yeah, no, it was just typically, a pergola was typically attached to the house, so it had to be like on your deck or patio. That's attached to the house, or do they? Are they now more? Can they be standalone pergolas?
Speaker 4:yeah, they can be either. They can either attach to your house or they can be standalone anywhere, anywhere you would prefer nice, nice.
Speaker 2:so what, what? Um, so that's, that's a trend that's still going strong, I guess. So it's the, the pergolas and the outdoor kitchens and fire pits, and so what? I noticed, you guys also offer outdoor furniture. So I guess, like if I wanted to redo my backyard, you guys are soup to nuts. You do the design process Like how does that work? What's the process like?
Speaker 4:Sure. So we would come out and, you know, have a meeting with you and talk about what your wishes are, where your budget might be, so we don't outrun your budget, do. What do you want to do yourself? Do you want to choose your own furniture? Do you want to look at our furniture? Um, you know, and you know how far do you want to go and and do you want to build it in stages? Sometimes people have very big ideas, um, and you know they can't quite reach those goals in the next year or two, but then you know we can talk about, well, this, this, you know planning. What should you do first? What should you do first, what should you do second? So you're not undoing what you've already paid to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think I'm kind of guilty of that, because I do one thing and then I'm like We've all been there. Oh, I wish I had thought of this first, because now I can't do it, because I already did this.
Speaker 3:But then we bring them into the showroom here in Ramsey. This but then we bring them into the showroom here in Ramsey that they can see all the different lines and colors of the decking and the different types of railings that we have and talk more about designs. And we do the pergolas, we do awnings. There's so much that we can show while they're here in the showroom with us.
Speaker 2:So you do awnings as well yes, we do yes, we do so you know, awnings for me were, um, you know, I think they they got a bad rap for years because you thought of an awning, you thought of just some I don't know old, uh cheesy, checkered thing that you might see down the shore, or something like that.
Speaker 4:Over your grandmother's window right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and they're dirty and they're, you know, they're just so because.
Speaker 3:I you know They've come a long way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I want to talk about that because personally I have I live in Harrington Park and we have our house faces a certain way that we get the east west sun coming across our deck and in the morning in the summer, if you want to sit out and have breakfast sometimes it's really bright or if you want to work out there and then at six o'clock forget it, you can't, you can't even eat out there because it's just too hot. And I have umbrellas that I can, you know, angle a certain way, but then you're moving them as the sun moves and, uh, then I'm like you know, maybe we'll just put the table out on the grass in the shade. So I, you know, I've thought about it. But my wife's like oh, an awning, oh, so you know, take me through that.
Speaker 2:And you know, and it's not, you can't put a pergola on top of your deck. Really, it would just be a little too. I don't know, I think it would be a little too much, but obviously there's ways of doing it. But so tell me a little bit more about the awnings, like what, how they've come in terms of you know where they used to be, and functionality and design where they used to be in functionality and design.
Speaker 4:Sure, so you know, most of them are retractable these days. So they, you know, roll out. If they're over your deck we can get quite long projections. You know, about 11 foot or so they can extend out from your house or 12.
Speaker 3:12 or 13,. Yeah.
Speaker 4:We can get them with roll-down screens so you can roll it out and then a screen will roll down. Yeah, that's important. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 3:So they're, uh, they've come a really long way, and the selection of fabrics that you can use these days is incredible. Hundreds, yeah, wow, yeah, yeah. They're much nicer than the old style awnings of years ago.
Speaker 2:So are you seeing more people are choosing awnings Cause I guess they're a little cheaper than doing a pergola.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's a different, it's a totally different look.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you want a pergola purely for shade, I guess that's not really why you would get a pergola. I mean there, I mean there's more of a design and it's design and functionality.
Speaker 4:A traditional pergola doesn't always give you all that much shade, because it's just open on the top.
Speaker 3:It gives you slices of shade, but not real shade, and then by the time you go to the louvered roof they get quite pricey. But they're nice, for the right customer, the right instance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my neighbors put in a 12 by 12 foot pergola in their backyard and they're both European, so it has kind of a European feel. They got vines growing up and things hanging down from it, so you feel like you're in the backyard in the south of France or something. Very nice, yeah, it's really nice. Yeah, so you, you're based in Ramsey. Where, what areas do you serve in Bergen County?
Speaker 4:Sure All of Bergen County, Passaic County, Morris County.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pretty much all of northern New Jersey and a little bit into Rockland County as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then you, in terms of like the types of budgets, I mean there's homes in Saddle River, then there's homes in Midland Park, there's homes in in Franklin Lakes and there's homes in Nanuet Right, so right. So you, you serve all, all budgets and we do Pretty much.
Speaker 4:We do, we, you know, we'll build you that you know. 15, $16,000, a little small deck off your house or the couple of $100,000 backyard Nice.
Speaker 2:Yes. So what is it about the business that you love the most? I'm going to put you on the spot. But what would you say you guys love? I mean, it's 50 years, right, it's family-owned, it's the legacy. What do you love about it? And then we it's family-owned, is the legacy, like, what do you love about it? And then, yeah, maybe we can get into maybe some of the frustrations. Let's focus on the positive what do I love?
Speaker 3:I love interacting with the people I love seeing the um, the happy customers at the end, hearing how happy they are with their new outdoor living space, whether it's just a small deck or again that big backyard yeah, I had a recent job in Westwood.
Speaker 4:The man was just like just dream big and you know you can turn your ideas into reality. You know, just like I love what you guys did, and just hearing happy customers at the end of the day is what we're all about. A lot of our customers have a lot of questions and they'll be like oh, I'm so sorry for so many questions, and we always tell them the same thing. It's way better to ask questions before we get started than when we're just about done you want to add something. It's a bigger problem at that point.
Speaker 4:So um, we're happy to uh to be here in the early stages to make sure everything's dialed in right so if, if, uh, it's february, there's snow on the ground, uh, for another couple days maybe.
Speaker 2:So if I'm thinking about having a, a deck built, an outdoor, you know, oasis is now the time to reach out, because I'd imagine there's, like you know, permits and town approvals and things like that, environmental studies. Maybe, if you're looking at, like, in Harrington Park, we have a lot of, you know, water. You know I live up against I guess you can call it a forest or whatever that's owned by what used to be called united waters. So there's streams back there, so I'd imagine there's some things that go into it. So what right? So now, now's the time to let's start planning oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4:You may be a little late already at this point in time, for you know to have it for the summer season so we're really.
Speaker 2:You can miss the whole summer, so it's almost like.
Speaker 4:Let's say late May, early June already. Okay.
Speaker 2:I've been to some. In the magazines that I publish I go to a lot of homes and there was a home in Hallworth which is where I have a magazine, and their backyard was like being on vacation. I was like, do you guys ever leave in the summer? They're like, no, not really the way their, the way their deck was. You know, they had a deck, they had a koi pond, they had a pool that was down on the lower level. It was just, you know, like you were saying, yeah, it's stunning, and you just feel like why would I ever leave? This is an oasis.
Speaker 3:I have to say COVID changed a lot of people speaking with that, and more people were doing staycations and are still doing those staycations and everybody was looking to upgrade their outdoor living space rather than just thinking of that, just building that deck. More people which is again what got us more involved in doing the whole outdoor the whole backyard, the whole backyard yeah right and then outdoor tvs I see, or a thing like how do they not get ruined? Special tvs that are made for outdoors?
Speaker 2:yeah right yeah, yeah, so, uh, one other question again. This is this is selfishly motivated, but so if somebody has like a swing set in the backyard and their kids grown and now they're like, okay, what am I going to do with this swing set, what am I going to do with this space? Have you ever helped somebody transform what used to be a playground area into a pergola and outdoor, you know kind of lounge area with the, with the TV and maybe the grill and the furniture and all that?
Speaker 4:Sure, yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a simple thing to do. Uh, you know, sign it up and uh, you know, and, and you know, make sure that we have everything right. And uh, you know, it's a, it's definitely in the wheelhouse and something we love to do. You know, it's a, it's definitely in the wheelhouse and something we love to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. So how do uh you know, is there anything else like you?
Speaker 4:that we haven't covered, that you'd like our listeners to, uh, to know about you guys. I mean, I guess you know just mainly that we're the family run business. You know the third generation, uh, um generation being very deeply involved. We care about every job, we care about every customer. We want to make sure we get that five-star review from you. At the end of the day, we're hands-on when we start your job. We're there every day, unless there's a holdup in inspections by the town. We never let jobs start for jobs at the same time. We would rather hold your job off for two weeks and say, well, when Mrs Smith is done, we will be there to start your job.
Speaker 4:None of this running around in that.
Speaker 3:And we're very big with communication.
Speaker 4:Oh yes.
Speaker 3:Quality. We try to build the best. We always build the best, above code everything. And I think to your point.
Speaker 2:My neighbor had a pool built during COVID but they hired a company from down South Jersey and they disappeared for months. They had a hole in the ground and then they just didn't come back and uh thanks.
Speaker 4:No, once, once, a once a customer signs a, a, a contract with us, um, they, they will hear from us every single Friday. So we communicate, we never want to take a deposit and not, you don't hear from me for, from us, for, um, you know, weeks on end, um, no matter what, if we have nothing to say, we'll just say hi, waiting on the town for your permit, or yep, we picked up your permit this week. You're probably about, you know, three, four weeks out. You know we'll set them a more firm date as the time gets closer and we've heard a lot of great feedback from clients of how great that communication made them feel. Uh, it's not that. I gave that guy, uh, you know, ten thousand dollars and I haven't heard in six weeks in jamaica, or is he, uh, I'm doing my job, yeah, yeah yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:And then just getting back to the time frame. So if somebody's looking at a j June graduation party and they want to have their backyard done by then, they got to call you now.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Speaking of calling you. The number to reach you at is 2 0, 1, 6, 4, 2 2, 8, 8 3.
Speaker 3:No 2, 0, 1, 3, 2, 7, 7, 8, 6, 4.
Speaker 2:And then the website is.
Speaker 3:N J Dexon railingscom.
Speaker 2:And then, and you're located in Ramsey. What's your address in Ramsey?
Speaker 3:1, 47 East main street.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so from a visual perspective, so they can come in and they can look at the material. But you guys also have like a design, kind of uh, computer-aided design, where you can show them what the what it's going to look like yes that's great.
Speaker 2:That's great yeah, we do beautiful 3d designs yeah, that's amazing yeah well, you know, I'm very intrigued and I think one of the things that you know you guys do it's very emotional and's it's very, as you say, transformative. Once your backyard is redone, your deck or whatever it is, it's an incredible, not only value add to your home's value, but you know the joy it brings to all the things you can do with your family and friends. It's, it's amazing. So I, I, you know, I really I enjoyed Judy and Bruce. Thank you so much for for joining the show and again I enjoyed, Judy and Bruce.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for for joining the show.
Speaker 2:And again it's NJ Dexam railingscom, and you can find them in in in Ramsey and give them a call Now if you're looking to do something for the summer.
Speaker 4:Yes, perfect.
Speaker 2:All right, thanks, I'm just going to have us just a little, you know, outro music and we'll be right back, thanks. Thanks, doug.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.