Deck Repair

Ledger first. The board bolting the deck to the house is where most serious deck failures start — water gets behind it, rot spreads unseen, and the connection lets go under load. If your deck flexes near the house or the ledger shows staining and soft wood, that's the priority over anything cosmetic.

Then joists and beams. A bouncy or spongy spot in the middle of the deck is usually one rotted joist, not a failing deck — joists can be sistered (a new joist bolted alongside the old) without rebuilding anything. Check where joists meet the ledger and where they sit on beams: those end-grain contact points hold water longest.

Then posts and footings. Same story as fence posts: ground contact plus irrigation equals rot at grade. A deck post on a proper footing above grade lasts decades; one buried in soil doesn't.

Boards and railings last. Cupped, splintering, or cracked boards are the visible aging — real, worth fixing, and the least structural part of the list.

A deck with a sound frame and tired surface is a repair: new boards on old bones is routine work at a fraction of rebuild cost. A deck with widespread joist rot or a compromised ledger is a structural conversation — and sometimes a permit conversation. Like-for-like repairs generally don't trigger permits; structural changes and expansion do, and under the California Residential Code any new deck over 200 sq ft, over 30 inches above grade, attached to the house, or serving the exit door needs one.

Before any quote is worth reading, one question: can the thing that has gone be dealt with where it sits, or does fixing it mean taking apart the things around it?

Boards — local, one at a time. A deck board dies at its ends and at its fastenings. End grain drinks, the screw hole holds water against the shank, and decay works inward from those two places while the middle of the same board is still sound. That is why a run can lose every third board with nothing wrong underneath it, and why replacing a board is genuinely a board-sized job.

Joists — local. A rotted joist gets sistered: a new member bolted alongside the old one, carrying the load the old one stopped carrying. The boards above and the beam below stay where they are.

The ledger — not local, and not a board job. The member bolting the deck to the house is the one part of a deck the code addresses directly. Under the California Residential Code, a deck attached to an exterior wall has to be positively anchored to the building for vertical and lateral load, and that attachment may not be made with toenails or with nails that can pull out (R507.8). So a ledger finding is a connection finding — it is the one result that reliably turns a surface repair into a larger conversation, and it is the reason the photograph from underneath is the one worth taking.

Two details the permit line turns on, for anyone measuring before they call: the 30-inch threshold is read at any point under the deck rather than at the door, and the exit-door clause means the exit door the code requires, not any door that happens to open onto the deck (R105.2).

Deck repair by town: Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Mountain View, plus the other Peninsula towns on the service-area list.

The town pages start from the deck stock each place is built out of, because that is what decides where to look first.

If you can reach underneath, photograph the ledger and a couple of joists — those two shots tell us more than ten photos of the surface. Add the worst boards and any railing that moves. You'll get a repair range and an honest call on repair vs rebuild.