Fence Repair Marin
Fence Repair Marin
Corte Madera runs from tidal marsh on the bay side up to Christmas Tree Hill, and the two ends of town have almost nothing in common as a job. The hill was subdivided back in 1895 as tent cabin lots of about twenty five hundred square feet, and it still reads that way. Roughly two hundred and fifty homes on narrow lanes and public stairs, redwoods overhead, property lines close enough that a fence repair is a conversation with the neighbor before it is anything else.
Down on the flats the water table sits high and the ground stays soft well into spring. Posts set in that soil move. Not quickly, and not all at once, but a line that was straight five years ago shows a bow through the middle, and that is the ground talking rather than the wood.
On the hill the constraint is getting materials up a staircase. On the flats it is what the post is standing in. We price both honestly rather than averaging them. Call today for a free estimate on fence installation or deck installation in Corte Madera.
Christmas Tree Hill is unusual enough to be worth its own conversation. Lots up there are small, the lanes are narrow, and a number of properties are reached by or border public stairways and paths that run between streets. That means two things before any fence gets built. The property line needs to be actually established rather than assumed, because on lots subdivided in 1895 the fence somebody built decades ago is frequently not on it, and a new fence set to the old one inherits the error. And where a lot borders a public stairway or path, what you can build along that edge is not purely your decision, since the town has an interest in access and sight lines there. We would rather sort that out at the drawing stage than build something that has to come down. Material access is the other constraint, since everything goes up the stairs by hand. Similar lanes exist in Mill Valley and the work runs the same way.
Most of what we are asked to look at on the hill is an older deck somebody wants to keep, and usually it can be kept. The decision comes down to framing. Deck boards, railings and stairs are all replaceable without touching the structure, so a deck with sound joists, beams and posts is a straightforward deck repair no matter how bad the surface looks. Once the framing has gone soft, or the posts are sitting directly on soil rather than on proper footings, which was common on decks of a certain age, then you are rebuilding whether or not the top looks fine. We probe the framing rather than eyeballing it, and we look specifically at where the deck meets the house and where posts meet the ground, since those two points account for most failures. On a narrow hillside lot the practical constraint is that partial demolition and rebuild is harder than it would be on a flat lot, and that shows up in the estimate.