Fairhaven has been showing Bellingham how to enjoy a waterfront since the 1890s — the brick blocks of the historic district, the boardwalk arcing over the bay at Boulevard Park, the Village Green filling up on summer evenings. The neighborhood's homes climb the hill above all of it, and many of them are Victorians and early craftsman houses whose porches and decks have been rebuilt several times over the last century. Building the next one well takes a contractor who respects both the era of the house and the physics of a wet, salty hillside.
Decks That Belong on a Historic Hill
A modern deck bolted carelessly onto an 1890s home looks wrong from the street and works wrong on the wall. Our Fairhaven projects begin with the house: we match railing proportions, baluster rhythm, and skirting details to the period so the new structure reads as part of the home, then hide current-code engineering inside it. Where the house has a view — and on this hill, most do — we shift to cable rail or glass on the bay-facing side so the San Juans stay in the picture while the street side keeps its historic face.
The structural work is where age gets serious. Attaching a deck ledger to century-old framing means opening the wall connection, verifying what is behind it, and flashing it so the deck never funnels water into the house — the exact failure that has quietly rotted more than one old Fairhaven sill. Slopes add the rest: many South Side lots drop steeply toward the water, so footings, bracing, and stair runs get engineered for the grade rather than adapted from a flat-lot plan.