Comparisons — including the ones we lose

If you want a cheaper terrace and you're willing to service it every year, buy larch. If you want geometry that won't move and color that sanding restores without exposing a pale interior, buy thermowood. The gap at purchase is roughly two to one; the gap in ten-year cost of ownership is far smaller.

Composite wins if the terrace is shaded, walked on in shoes, and you want to not touch it for ten years. Thermowood wins if people go barefoot on it, it sits in sun, and you want to be able to sand it back to new in year five. The decisive difference isn't rot — it is that a scratch in composite can't be repaired.

Ash is denser with bolder figure, and if ash is what you want, buy ash. Karagach Elit with the Signature program is 83,500 ₸/m² against 90,670 ₸/m² for wide ash with factory oiling: 7,170 ₸/m² cheaper, and the only one of the two with a manufacturer's guarantee here.

Thermo-pine starts at 23,285 ₸/m² for facade and 31,600 for decking; karagach starts at 55,000. The difference buys hardness underfoot, interlocked grain that resists splitting, and access to the care programs with a geometry guarantee. If nobody walks on the surface — a facade, or a soffit under an overhang — pine is often enough.

On the board itself the gap may be small. The gap is in service: an importer has no legal entity here, no installation crew and no commercial reason to accept a claim. We make the board twenty kilometers away, install it with our own crew and service it on a schedule — which is why we'll underwrite geometry for up to six years.

Timber joists are cheaper and faster, and on a small pad by the house they are enough. The DeckKing steel frame is 110,000 ₸/m² and gives what joists can't: height adjustment, no rot underneath, and a written six-year "no sagging, no breakage" guarantee. The rule is simple: the larger the area and the dearer the board on top, the more an inaccurate substructure costs you.

An imported kitchen gives you mature design, a name, and a catalog the architect already knows. We give you a kitchen drawn for your yard rather than fitted to a catalog; cooking units welded in our own shop; a guarantee someone drives out on; and a replacement module we can still make in five years. If the project is standard and the name matters, buy the import.

A glued panel is more stable, cheaper and can be made at any size — the right choice for a work surface, a kitchen countertop, and anything where geometry matters more than character. A solid slab is bought for a figure that exists once and for a live edge. If you describe the table as "a big pale table, two meters by one", you want a panel.

Thermal modification heats timber to 180–215 °C with no chemicals. Sugars and hemicelluloses break down, leaving rot and wood-boring beetles nothing to feed on, and equilibrium moisture content falls from 12–15% to 4–6%, so the board barely takes up water and holds its geometry. The price is a 26–45% loss in bending strength and more frequent surface micro-checking. Ordinary timber is cheaper and stronger, but outdoors it lasts years rather than decades.