Deck Repair & Restoration Services proudly serving Oregon City, West Linn, Lake Oswego, and more of the Portland Metro
You have probably noticed something already. A board that gives a little when you step on it, a post that does not look quite straight, a railing that moves when you lean on it. It is easy to tell yourself it can wait until next summer.
It usually cannot. Our winters keep the underside of a deck damp for months at a time, and rot works from the inside out. By the time a board feels soft underfoot, the joist holding it up has often been wet for a long while.
So every repair starts underneath. We get below the deck and check the ledger where it meets your house, the joists, the posts and the footings, then tell you what we actually found before we quote anything or lift a single board.
That is the only way we can tell you the deck is solid when we leave, rather than that it looks solid.
What we find down there decides what the job turns out to be:
The details nobody photographs are the ones that protect your investment for decades. Here is how we build them better.
Keeps the area under a raised deck dry, so you can use it for a patio or storage.
Covers the exposed framing around the outside so the deck looks finished from the yard.
Closes in the open gap under the deck so animals stay out.
Carries rain off the cover and away from the deck.
Bench seating built into the deck, so you need fewer chairs out there.
Steps that are all the same height, with a solid landing at the bottom.
Custom features built into your deck from day one—engineered to handle the Oregon weather.
Adds some shade while keeping the deck open to the backyard.
Keeps you and the deck dry when it's raining.
Adds privacy from neighbors and nearby homes.
Gives you a safe railing without blocking the view.
A simple railing option that keeps the deck feeling open.
A wider top on the railing where you can set drinks, plates, or other small items.
Adds light to stairs and railings so it's easier to see and move around after dark.
It comes down to the frame rather than the boards. If the joists, the ledger and the footings are sound, you are in repair territory and the deck has years left. Once several of those have gone soft, patching stops making sense and you end up paying twice. A common rule of thumb is that a deck past about fifteen years with rot in the structure does better rebuilt. We get underneath and tell you which one you have.
The ledger is the board holding your deck to the house. It carries a large share of the deck's weight, and when a deck fails, that is usually where it started. Water getting in behind it is the common cause — it rots quietly, out of sight, while the surface still looks fine. We check the ledger and its flashing on every repair, because it is the one part you cannot see and cannot afford to be wrong about.
Bounce usually means the joists are spanning further than they comfortably can, or that the blocking between them has come loose. It is not always dangerous, but it is your deck telling you something. Often the fix is adding blocking or a beam underneath, which is a smaller job than it sounds. We would rather look than guess, because bounce and rot sometimes turn up together.
Yes. Taking the old deck out and getting rid of it is part of the job and part of the price we give you, so you are not left with a pile of old boards and a trip to the dump. We keep the debris contained while we work rather than letting it spread across the lawn, and the site gets cleared before we finish.
Often, yes. Stairs, railings and a section of boards can each be done on their own. What we check first is whether the part that failed is telling you about the rest — a soft stair stringer sitting on soil is a local problem, while several soft joists usually is not. If a partial repair means you will be back at this in two years, we will say so rather than take the smaller job.
If you can move it, it helps. Furniture, pots, the grill — anything sitting on the deck has to come off before we can lift boards, and we would rather you moved the things you care about than us. Anything genuinely heavy we can shift ourselves. We will tell you what needs clearing when we come out to look, so nothing is a surprise on the first morning.
We come to your house, measure the space, and look under the existing deck if there is one. Then we talk through what will work on your lot and roughly what it will cost.
You get an honest, clear estimate covering boards, framing, labor, haul-away and the permit. Nothing gets ordered until you have seen it.
The same crew handles everything from tearing out the old deck through the final inspection, and we clean up the site when we are done.
We are licensed, bonded and insured to work in Oregon. Our registration number is in the footer of this page, and you can look it up in the state registry before you hire anyone. It is worth doing with any contractor.
We draw the plans and file the permit with the city for you, so it is not something you have to sort out yourself.
The same crew builds your deck from start to finish. The framing does not get handed off to a subcontractor partway through.
Boards, framing, labor, haul-away and the permit are all spelled out, so you can see what you are paying for rather than one total at the bottom of a page. No surprises once the work starts.
We return calls the same day. It sounds small, but not hearing back is the most common complaint homeowners have about contractors.
We get about nine months of rain a year here, so we build decks to shed water. That means proper spacing between boards and drainage that moves water away from the frame.
Tell us what you have in mind. We will come out, look at your space, and give you an honest, clear estimate. There is no charge for the visit and no pressure to book.
