Is it time to replace the deck?

[u/cleatusvandamme]

This is a bit of a long story.

I inherited my house from my folks a few years ago. The house is roughly 30 years old. Unfortunately, my dad could be excessively cheap and sometimes it would bite him in the ass in the long run.

An example of this is fixing something cheaply and then having to pay more to have it properly corrected.
The deck to the house has been a shitshow of a situation. The original builder of the house did a piss poor job of putting it together. So my dad brought in a guy to build supports to it. A few years later another guy came over and added a railings to it. Over the years he would touch up the stain on it and that was about it.

About 3 years ago, I was able to convince him the boards are 25+ years old and touching them up isn’t going to solve things. Some were close to breaking.
I knew a handy man from the gym and he was able to replace the boards to the deck. At the time I was looking at the posts and noticed how they were cracking. After 3 years, I’m noticing that some other parts of the deck are cracking as well. TBH, I’ve suspected that we probably should have torn everything out and just start fresh.

Last week I tried to do some touch up staining and unfortunately it looks bad. At the moment, I have quite a bit going on and me trying to fix the staining won’t happen. In all honesty, it could be a case where if I did it, I might need a professional to correct my work.

Should I bring in someone to stain it properly or should I just get a whole new deck?

[u/godlords]

No? The "cracking" is normal and not a concern. Looks great.