The Meridian neighborhood in north Bellingham is where the city's everyday life happens — homes from the 1960s through the 1990s spread across the flats between Squalicum Creek and the Bellis Fair area, close to schools, parks, and every errand on the Guide Meridian. The decks here were mostly built by the same generation as the houses, and a large share of them are now simply done: gray, splintered, spongy at the stairs, and overdue for a decision.
The Thirty-Year Deck Problem
A pressure-treated deck built in the 1980s or 90s had a natural lifespan of twenty to thirty wet Bellingham winters, and the math has caught up with much of Meridian at once. The failure sequence is familiar to us by now: nail heads back out of the decking, surface boards check and splinter, the stair stringers loosen, and — invisibly — the ledger connection and any soil-contact posts rot from the inside. The deck often looks worse than it is on top and is worse than it looks underneath.
That is why our estimates start under the deck, not on it. If the framing is genuinely sound, a re-deck — new surface boards and railings over existing structure — can save you real money, and we do plenty of them. If the structure is compromised, we will show you exactly where and rebuild it properly: flashed ledger, standoff post bases, structural screws instead of rusted nails, and footings that actually drain on these flat lots.