Fence Repair Marin
Fence Repair Marin
Licensed, local, and on the job fast, from a leaning fence post in Novato to a full deck rebuild in Mill Valley.
A fence is the first thing that fails quietly. A post rots at the base, a panel leans an inch a season, and by the time it's obvious from the street, the damage has usually been building for a year or more behind it. Marin's wet winters and dry, windy falls are hard on wood especially, swelling it one season and cracking it the next.
We've pulled apart enough old fence lines and deck framing across this county to know exactly where that damage starts and what it costs to ignore it. Most of what we fix would have been a fraction of the price caught six months earlier.
Most of what we do is fence repair and deck repair rather than full replacement, and that is deliberate. Catching a fence at three bad posts instead of thirty is the difference between an afternoon and a rebuild. We would rather look at it early and tell you it can wait.
This is the question almost every call starts with, and the answer is usually better than people expect. On a fence, what matters is the posts. Panels, boards and rails are cheap to swap and easy to match. Posts are the expensive part, because replacing one properly means digging out the old concrete footing and setting a new one. If the posts are sound and a few sections have failed, that is a repair. If the posts have gone at grade along most of the run, new panels on top of them buy you two or three years and then you are paying for a full replacement anyway.
Decks work the same way one layer down. Surface boards come off and go back on without touching anything structural, and that is a straightforward job. What matters is the framing underneath and the connection where the deck meets the house. New decking over compromised framing is money spent twice, and we will say so rather than take the easier job or quote you a new deck you do not need.
Permits factor in too. In unincorporated Marin County a fence seven feet or lower generally needs no building permit, though anything over six feet needs a Planning Division permit, and retaining walls four feet and under are usually exempt. Individual towns are stricter, Ross and Tiburon especially. We check what applies to your address before quoting, not after.
Leaning post in Novato, storm-cracked panel in Fairfax, a gate that won't latch in San Rafael, we see it all. Wood, vinyl, chain link, or wrought iron, we repair every fence material found on Marin properties, and we're usually out within the week of your call. Catch it early and it's an afternoon fix; wait a season and it's a full section replacement.
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A new fence line for privacy, a property boundary, a pool enclosure, or pet containment, sized and sited for your specific lot. We install in wood, vinyl, and chain link, and we handle the Marin County permit process so you're not the one tracking down paperwork. Hillside grading around Fairfax and San Anselmo gets factored in from the start.
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Soft boards, wobbly railings, a failing ledger connection where the deck meets the house, we fix the full range and bring old decks back to code and back to safe. Marin's coastal fog keeps wood damp longer than most homeowners expect, so we check the structure, not just the surface, before we quote the job.
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A new deck built and permitted to Marin County code, in pressure-treated wood or composite, engineered for your property's actual grading and drainage. Hillside lots around Mill Valley and Tiburon need deeper footings and different support than a flat lot in Novato, and we design for that from day one rather than treating every deck the same.
Learn More →Hillside lots, clay soil, coastal fog belt versus inland heat, the fixes that work in Fairfax don't always work in Tiburon, and we build for the difference.
Every job is done to code by a properly licensed, insured local contractor, so you're covered if anything goes wrong.
We give real quotes over the phone when we can, and we show up when we say we will.
Tell us what's going on with your fence or deck and roughly how much of it is affected. We can usually tell you on the phone whether you are in repair territory or replacement territory.
Usually within a day or two of your call. We check posts and footings on a fence, and the framing and ledger connection on a deck, not just what shows from the surface.
In writing, before anything starts, with repair and replacement priced separately when both are real options. Nothing gets added later.
We protect what is around the work area, haul off the old material, and walk you through what was done before we call it finished.
Marin is not one job. Ross caps front yard fences at four feet and wants design review above that. Tiburon can trigger planning review on anything over forty two inches and asks for the property line verified before you build. Fairfax and the canyon streets sit in an elevated fire hazard zone, which changes how a fence should meet the house. Same county, three different conversations.
Terrain does the rest. A hillside deck above San Anselmo has to handle runoff a flat lot in Terra Linda never will, and posts set in the softer ground down near the marsh move in a way hillside posts do not. That's the kind of detail that separates a fence still standing in fifteen years from one back on our schedule in three.
"Fixed our back fence in two days after a storm took out three panels."
— Karen, Corte Madera"Straightforward quote, no surprises, deck looks better than when it was new."
— Mike, Larkspur"Quoted us within a day and had the new side fence up before the weekend. Would use them again."
— Denise, NovatoCalifornia's Good Neighbor Fence Act, Civil Code section 841, presumes adjoining owners share equally in the reasonable cost of a boundary fence. There is a step people miss. Before you incur the cost, the law calls for thirty days written notice to the neighbor describing the problem, the proposed fix, the estimated cost and how you propose to split it. The presumption can be rebutted if an equal split would be genuinely unfair. We are happy to put a quote in a form you can hand to a neighbor.
It comes down to posts. Swapping panels or boards on sound posts is the low end. Replacing a post properly means digging out the old concrete and setting a new footing, so the number climbs with each post that has to come out. Material matters, and so does access on a hillside lot.
Look at where the deck attaches to the house first. Roughly ninety percent of deck collapses trace back to that ledger connection rather than the decking or the railing, and the usual cause is a ledger that was nailed instead of bolted, or one with no flashing above it letting water sit against the house. If your deck is past fifteen years and nobody has looked underneath it, that is worth an inspection.
All of them. Wood, vinyl, chain link and wrought iron. Chain link usually fails at the top rail or where the fabric has pulled loose from the posts, and both are straightforward. Vinyl cracks rather than rots, so the repair is about matching an existing profile, which is worth checking before you assume the whole run has to go.
Most are a single day. The exception is anything needing new post footings, because concrete has to cure before load goes on it, which usually means coming back the next day to finish. We tell you which one you are looking at when we quote.
Both are driven more by material and site than by length alone. On fences, wood is the low end and wrought iron the high end, with vinyl in between. On decks, pressure-treated costs less up front than composite but needs more maintenance over its life. Hillside access and grading add to either.
