Fence installation
in Mukilteo, WA.

It comes off Possession Sound with nothing to slow it down, and a tight-board privacy fence on a bluff lot catches it like a sail. That load works shallow posts loose, backs cheap screws out, and rusts bargain hinges until the gate drops. On exposed runs we go deeper and closer with the posts, spec coated fasteners and gate hardware for the salt air, and sometimes recommend a board pattern with a little daylight in it, because letting a gust through beats picking a panel up off the lawn.

Between Japanese Gulch, Big Gulch, and the hillsides rolling south past Picnic Point, a dead-flat Mukilteo fence line is the exception, so most of ours step downhill in level panels. Stepping takes layout time, but it's what keeps the top of the fence reading clean and the gap at the bottom too tight for a dog to shop around under. The goat, for the record, is the only member of the crew that likes a gulch lot better than a flat one.

Harbour Pointe went in as one master plan, starting in the late 80s and filling out through the 2000s, so its cedar fences tend to gray out and go soft at the ground line in waves, street by street. Salt air moves that schedule up along the western edges. We tear out the tired run, price the haul-away before the work starts, and rebuild with posts set in concrete and the boards held off the dirt, which is most of what slows the clock down the second time around.