Birchwood is one of Bellingham's most practical neighborhoods — ranches, split-levels, and modest two-stories from the 1960s through the 1980s on manageable lots in the city's flat northwest corner. The decks here tend to match the houses: sensible backyard platforms built for barbecues, kids, and dogs rather than magazine covers. Our job in Birchwood is usually simple to describe and satisfying to do — replace a deck that has quietly aged out with one that will outlast the mortgage.
Why Birchwood Decks Wear Out the Way They Do
Most decks in this part of town were built in the same era as the houses, or added in the decades since with the materials of the day: pressure-treated framing, exposed nail-down decking, posts sometimes buried straight in the dirt. Forty wet Bellingham winters later, the pattern is predictable. Surface boards check and splinter, nail heads back out, the stairs loosen first, and the framing rots from the bottom up where posts meet soil. Because the lots are flat, water that should drain away often just sits — under the deck, around the footings, against the skirting.
Our rebuilds address that directly. Footings get set on grade that actually sheds water, posts ride on standoff bases so they never touch soil, and the ledger gets flashed properly against the house. None of this is exotic; it is just the difference between a deck built to pass a weekend and one built to pass decades.