Decks and Patio Covers in Washougal, WA
Most decks in Washougal go in for the view, the Columbia off a waterfront lot or the Gorge spread out from the hills above town. What people forget is that the best view sits right where the Gorge-mouth wind is worst. Washougal catches more east wind than just about anywhere in Clark County, the same wind the windsurfers come for, and it pushes winter rain into every seam and fastener on an exposed deck. So we size the posts and bracing for uplift, lap the flashing the right way, and pick hardware that will not rust out. Build it loose and the wind finds the weak spot first.
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We match or beat most written estimates
Remodels completed
Decks, covers and repairs
Decks from the ground up
The full build, footings to railing: posts, beams, joists, decking and stairs, flashed for the wet, done in composite or cedar.
Rebuilding a failing deck
A frame with life left gets fresh boards over the top. One the wet has eaten through comes out down to the footings.
Solid patio roofs
A proper roof over the patio, tied into the house, so the space still earns its keep in January.
Posts, beams and ledgers
Footings, posts, beams, and the ledger bolting the deck to the house.
Rail swaps and code fixes
Old rails come off first, then we probe each post for soft wood and reinforce how it ties into the rim and joists. Every new guard must meet today’s code, standing no shorter than 36 inches anywhere the walking surface sits more than 30 inches above grade. All of it happens without tearing out your deck.
From bare joists to a done deck
The frame is the part you never see again once the boards go down. This is the same deck at both stages.
Drag the handle. Left, the deck framed: joists on the beam, nothing to walk on yet. Right, the same deck finished, with the timber cover over it and the steps down to the yard.
Before After The ledger is where decks fail first
When somebody calls us out to a deck that has gone wrong, the problem is more often than not the ledger, the single board that carries the whole deck’s weight back into the house. The ledger lives behind the decking where you never look at it, and if the flashing over it was lapped the wrong way, the horizontal rain Washougal gets off the river works down behind the board. From there it sits in the rim joist and the bottom of the wall, rotting framing you cannot see until one day the deck has quietly pulled a half inch off the house. That is why we strip the ledger open before we quote a rebuild, and why on a new deck we take our time flashing and through-bolting it. Every other part of a deck will show you it is failing. This one will not.
Four choices: surface, frame, footings, rail
Here is where you make the calls. There are four of them, and only one has anything to do with what your feet actually touch.
Start with the surface, because it is the one choice you stand on. Treated fir is the low-cost option and the one that never holds still; it shrinks and swells through our winters, needs a full season to dry before it will take a finish, and after that lives on a cycle of washing and resealing. Cedar costs more, lies flatter underfoot and feels better to stand on, but the cedar milled today runs heavy with soft sapwood, so after a few years its upkeep lands close to fir. Capped composite is the biggest number the day it goes down and almost nothing after, with no graying, no slivers and no sealer, though it does hold heat on a sunny lot up in the hills. Price per board was never the real question here. It is whether you will keep after a wood deck with a wash and a reseal every year or two, and most people, if they are honest, already know which kind they are.
No matter what you walk on, the frame under it is wood, and the frame is where a deck is made or ruined. We build it in pressure-treated stock, set every joist into a hanger instead of toe-nailing the ends, and spec hot-dipped galvanized or stainless on every hanger and screw. Treated lumber is loaded with copper, and copper eats ordinary zinc alive, so a bargain hanger rusts down to nothing while it is meant to be holding your deck up. We also cap each joist with a strip of tape. It costs a few dollars a roll and keeps rain out of the one edge of the frame that otherwise stays damp all winter.
Under all of it sit the footings, the part nobody ever sees and the part that decides whether the rest lasts. The ground is what a deck really stands on. We bore the holes to the depth the City of Washougal calls for, fill them with real concrete, and set each post on a base that lifts it off the top of the pad so it is not standing in water. Drive a post straight into the soil, the way plenty of older decks around here were built, and you have bought yourself the most common reason a good-looking deck gets condemned early.
Railing mostly comes down to the view, and in Washougal the view is the reason the deck exists. Wood is the cheapest and asks for the same regular attention as a wood floor. Powder-coated black aluminum is where most owners end up: slim uprights, nothing to maintain, and it nearly disappears against the trees or the river. Cable and glass open the Columbia and the Gorge up completely and cost the most, which is why they turn up on the waterfront lots and the view homes on the hills, and both carry their own rules on post spacing and infill that a frame laid out for wood rail often will not meet. Whatever you choose, some numbers do not move. Rail height and the spacing between balusters are fixed by code, not by taste.
Two things are far cheaper to decide now than to add on later. Stairs eat more of the budget than their footprint suggests, because every tread is its own small piece of framing, and a wide, gentle run costs more than a narrow, steep one while being the difference between a deck people actually use and one they only glance at. The other is anything electrical, a low-voltage run under the rail, an outlet, a fan in a cover; it is cheap to rough-in while the frame is open and a real nuisance once the boards are screwed down.
Deck and cover built as one job
This photo is a deck we built, and it happens to catch both things this page is about in a single shot: a raised deck, and a covered part of it that still holds up once the rain settles in for the season.
Look along the edge. A lighter board wraps the full perimeter and carries on around each of the two wide steps dropping to the soil. That is a picture frame border, and it costs more than a straight-cut edge: every field board has to be measured and cut to die into it, and the framing beneath that rim has to be doubled to hold it. It is also the detail that keeps a deck from reading as nothing but a field of boards. See how the steps are wide and shallow instead of narrow and steep. That is what makes a deck feel like part of the yard rather than a platform you climb up onto.
The four-post structure on top is a wood gazebo with dark mesh panels, and it stands on the deck itself, not on footings of its own. That means the frame underneath had to be built to carry its weight before the first surface board went down. It is the everyday version of what we mean when we call a cover framing work and not an add-on: what holds it up gets decided down in the joists, well before anyone is thinking about a roofline.
Choosing between wood and composite
Neither one is the wrong call; they just fit different people. Cedar and treated wood cost less to start and will take a new finish for decades, but in Washougal they only stay good if you wash and reseal them on a schedule you actually keep. Composite costs more on day one and then shrugs off the moss and gray that our winters drive into bare wood. Whichever you pick, the surface matters less than the thing neither choice changes: the frame underneath is wood either way, and how well that frame went together is what sets how many years the deck gives you.
Making the patio usable through the rain
Washougal gets most of its rain in the exact months you would otherwise want to be out back, and those months make up most of the year. Put a solid roof over the patio, flashed properly into the house and carried on posts that sit on real footings, and you take back most of that time as space you will genuinely use. Because it ties into the structure of the house, it is framing, not a tacked-on lean-to, and that nearly always calls for a permit, which we pull through the City of Washougal over at City Hall on C Street. The same crew draws it, permits it and builds it.
Where the money goes on a deck
Three things drive most of the number: the size, how far off the ground it sits, and the surface you settle on. The cheap end is a rebuild at grade on a frame that is still worth saving. New footings, tall posts, a full stair run, or tearing out and replacing the frame all push it the other way. Composite runs more in material and buys you out of the yearly upkeep. If somebody else has already written you a number, bring it to us, because we match or beat most written estimates by 10%, in writing.
The boards are not where the money actually goes, even though that is the first price everyone asks about. Labor and framing take the biggest share: cutting and hanging joists, standing and bracing posts and beams, and building stairs, which are the most labor-heavy square feet on the whole job. Footings and the digging to reach them come next, and they add up fast as a deck gets taller, because higher posts need bigger footings and serious lateral bracing to stand against the Gorge-mouth wind. After that comes the decking and the hardware, then the railing, which people guess low on because it is sold by the foot and a deck has a lot of feet. The finish work is last: skirting, lighting, a gate, the trim that hides the frame.
It is why two decks with the exact same square footage can land a long way apart on price, one standing four feet up a sloping lot in the hills north of town with a full stair run, the other sitting flat on a level yard down in the river valley. When the budget is set and will not give, the change that saves the most is almost always the height and the shape of the deck, not the boards you walk on.
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How a deck build goes, start to finish
Almost all of this happens outdoors, so a deck is one of the easier jobs to have going on while you still live in the house. Here is how it usually goes, step by step.
Getting it drawn and permitted
First we settle the sizes, the heights, where the stairs land and how the rail runs, then the drawings go in to the City of Washougal for a permit. On any deck bolted to the house, and on every roofed cover, this step is not optional, and it is the one stretch we cannot hurry, because the timing is in the city’s hands.
Snapping lines and pouring concrete
We lay out and snap the lines, then bore the footing holes down to the depth Washougal’s inspectors want, pour real concrete and set the post bases. A wet stretch can bump this day, since fresh concrete needs the right conditions to set.
Raising the frame, getting it inspected
The ledger gets through-bolted and flashed to the wall, posts and beams go up and get braced to take the east wind, and the joists are hung and taped across the top. The inspector looks the frame over while every connection is still exposed, which is the whole point of building in this order.
Boards down, stairs cut
The surface boards get fastened down, a picture frame border is run around the outside edge, and the stairs are cut and hung at the end. By the close of this stretch it finally reads as a deck instead of a framed-up jobsite.
Setting rails and wrapping up
The finish work closes it out: the railing with its posts and infill, skirting, deck lighting, a gate if you want one. None of it is heavy, but it is what carries a deck from almost done to properly squared away.
Clearing the site and walking it with you
When the work is done the crew clears out the same day: offcuts, footing spoil, the dumpster, all of it. What is left is a walk around the finished deck with you, estimate in hand. If you chose wood, that is when we give you the straight story on timing that first coat of sealer.
Common questions from Washougal homeowners
Do I have to rebuild the frame too, or just the boards?
Sometimes just the boards, and when that is the case you keep a real chunk of money. So before we quote anything, we crawl underneath and work through the frame: the posts and beams first, then the joists, then the ledger where it meets the house, checking each part for rot and movement. After that you get the straight version, whether the frame stays, part of it comes out and gets replaced, or the smartest move is to start fresh. You decide on what is really down there, not a hopeful guess.
Will my deck need a permit here in Washougal?
Most do. Anything attached to the house, or raised more than a single low step, has to be permitted, and a roofed cover almost always does too, because now you are into structural and load questions. In the city those permits and inspections run through the City of Washougal, not Clark County, so we file the plans at City Hall on C Street and schedule the framing and final checks ourselves as a licensed WA contractor, Lic. #EVERGRS757MC. The exception is a low platform sitting flat on the ground, which can sometimes skip the permit entirely.
How much time does the whole job need?
Plan on anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks on site, depending on the size, how many footings go in, and what the weather does. The schedule is written into your estimate up front. One upside of a cover: once it is roofed, the crew can keep working under it through rain that would have shut down an open footing pour.
Is a deck that gives underfoot something to fix?
A deck that flexes when you walk it is telling you the framing is either undersized or starting to come apart, and that is worth an in-person look, more so if it stands a few feet up on a slope. If you can get under it safely, take a few photos of the joists and the hangers and send them along, and we will tell you what we are looking at before anyone drives out.
In this weather, how many years does a new deck last?
The honest answer is that it rides on the frame, not on the surface up top. Build the frame right, treated lumber, the ledger flashed, the joists taped, galvanized hangers, and the posts held up off the concrete, and it will outlast two or three deck surfaces. A wood top washed and sealed on time holds up a good long while; leave it alone through Washougal’s wet and it goes to moss, then gray, then soft. Composite beats both and still rides on that very same frame, which is why the real decision was in the framing all along.
Do you have to tear out my old patio first?
A lot of the time, no. If there is enough height to work with and the water still has a clear path off the slab, we can frame a low deck on sleepers straight over the concrete and skip the digging and the footings entirely. But if that slab is badly cracked or it slopes back toward the house, we deal with that first, because sealing water in against your foundation under a brand-new deck is the kind of slow, expensive mistake nobody catches until it is bad.
Is it better to build the cover together with the deck?
Yes, and doing the two together saves you real money. A cover is carried either by the deck framing itself or on its own posts and footings, and either way that load has to be designed into the plan before the first surface board goes down. Try to add one after the fact and you are usually pulling boards back up to reach the frame, which is work you already paid to have finished once.
Why does my deck turn green every winter?
Moss is just the cost of a flat surface in this climate. It sets up wherever a deck sits in shade, holds water down against the board, and keeps the wood under it damp for weeks at a stretch. A clean gap between the boards, joist tape underneath, and a good wash once winter eases off will handle most of it. But if your deck sits in the shade of firs down in the river valley and never really catches the sun, that is less a reason to reseal more often and more a reason to go composite from the start.
The Washougal areas we build in
Our shop is on SE 184th Avenue in east Vancouver, a straight run east on SR-14 to Washougal with no bridge to cross, so this deck work stays close to home. We build all across Washougal: the view lots up in the hills north of town, the newer waterfront homes down along the Columbia near Steamboat Landing and Cottonwood Beach, the older streets around downtown and the historic district, out along the Washougal River valley and River Road, through the Hathaway neighborhoods, and up into Fern Prairie, along with the rest of east Clark County.
The rest of what we do
What homeowners say
Three of the 50 reviews on our Google profile, in the homeowners' own words.
Wow. Just Wow. Had the Evergreen crew replace existing fencing, put in a 33.5ft x 18.5ft multi-tiered deck, and assemble a 12ft x 16ft gazebo. Couldn't be happier with the results.
Anthony L.Deck, fence and gazebo
We talked to 4 different contractors and only David, of Evergreen, took the time to climb up to our roof to check out the job. The others gave us bids based upon a photo. Evergreen was not the cheapest but the extent of the work they did was worth every penny.
Steve K.Roof and exterior work
We had a small but very unique project and this team handled it with a great attitude. They were responsive, on time, and the finished work looks like it was always meant to be there.
Paige T.Small custom project
Tell us what needs fixing
Send photos and a short description. If it arrives before 5pm you get an answer the same day.
Already have a written estimate from someone else? Send that too. We match or beat most estimates by 10%.
- Call(971) 715-0673
- Emaildavid@evergreenremodeling.co
- Office505 SE 184th Ave Unit 320, Vancouver, WA 98683
- LicenseWA Lic. #EVERGRS757MC
