Deck Builders in Woodinville

Almost never, and doing so is the most common way to spend a lot of money making a large garden feel smaller. Privacy is about specific sightlines rather than about enclosure — what can be seen from where you sit, and from where a neighbour or a road looks in. On a large lot that is usually one direction and a modest run. A well-placed screen at the seating area, or a section of planting that breaks the line, does the job for a fraction of the cost and leaves the openness that made the property attractive. The time to work it out is standing in the garden, not looking at a plan.

Twenty years or more if it is built properly; eight to ten if it is not, and the difference is almost entirely below ground. Posts fail first, at the point where they meet the soil, because that zone is permanently damp and has oxygen. Post material, setting method and drainage around the base are what determine lifespan. Above ground the details matter more than the timber grade: end grain sealed, boards not in contact with the ground, and enough air movement that a wet fence dries between rainfalls. The boards themselves are rarely what fails, which is why a fence can look fine and be about to lean.

Wind, and the fact that a fence is a sail. A solid fence panel presents a large flat area to a gust, and on an open Woodinville lot with nothing upwind to break the flow, the load on each post is substantially higher than the same fence would see in a sheltered city garden. That means deeper post settings, closer spacing, or a design that lets some air through — a slatted or louvred screen with gaps takes far less wind load than a solid one and provides most of the same privacy. It is a specification decision that costs little at build and is expensive to correct.

Either is legitimate, but decide at the start and be consistent, because the two do not mix well. Left alone, cedar weathers to a grey that many people prefer to any stain — the difficulty on a large property is that it silvers unevenly, since a run in full sun weathers faster than one in shade, and after two years the difference between elevations can be marked. Staining keeps the tone consistent and commits you to redoing it periodically across the whole run. What looks worst is a garden where some runs were stained and some were not, which is usually how it happens rather than how it was intended.