Fence Repair, Deck Repair, Pergolas and Patio Covers
Exterior woodwork for West Houston backyards — fence and gate repair, deck board and railing work, pergolas, patio covers, and privacy screens. We fix sections instead of selling you a tear-out.
What We Do
What We Do
- Fence repair — rotted posts, leaning sections, loose rails, and popped or split pickets
- Gate repair and rebuild — sagging gates, dragging latches, hinge and post failure
- New fence sections, replacement runs, and gates where a full tear-out is not warranted
- Deck repair — board replacement, railing repair, stair treads, and re-securing loose framing
- Pergolas, arbors, and shade structures over an existing patio or slab
- Patio covers and attached shade framing
- Privacy screens and slat walls for patios, hot tubs, and pool equipment
- Exterior trim, fascia, soffit, column wrap, and porch carpentry repair
- Planters, benches, garden boxes, and built-in outdoor storage
- Fence and deck staining, sealing, and refinishing
Pricing
What affects price
How It Works
Our Process
Send photos of the fence, deck, or patio and rough measurements — that is usually enough to start
We tell you straight whether it is a repair or a rebuild, before anything gets priced
You get one written estimate with materials, sequencing, and what is excluded
We build on site with landscaping protected and the yard cleaned up at the end of each day
We walk the finished work together, then stain or seal if that is in scope
Have a project in mind?
Send photos and your list. We scope the work and return an itemized estimate.
Backyards in Katy and West Houston take a beating. Clay soil swells and shrinks against fence posts, straight-line winds find the weak run, and the deck the builder put in eight years ago now has three soft boards and a railing that moves. Elevate Your Space Handyman does the exterior woodwork side of that list — fence and gate repair, deck repair, pergolas, patio covers, and privacy screens — as measured carpentry rather than a tear-out-and-replace bid.
Outdoor work is one of the strongest parts of our business, and it is not because we chase full fence replacements. It is because we take the jobs in between: the single leaning section, the gate that drags, the deck that needs framing help before it needs boards, and the patio that needs a real structure built over it.
Two ways to start, depending on the size of the job
Small and defined — book a visit. A sagging gate, a handful of pickets, a soft deck board, a loose railing, a post reset. These do not need an estimate cycle. Book a handyman to-do list visit, stack the outdoor items with anything else on your list, and it gets handled in one trip. Booked time starts at $175 for the first hour.
A structure or a rebuild — request a quote. Pergolas, patio covers, privacy walls, deck rebuilds, and long fence runs get a written scope with materials, sequencing, and exclusions before anyone starts cutting. Send photos and rough dimensions and we will come back with a real number, not a range that moves later.
If you are not sure which one you have, send the photos. Telling you it is a one-visit repair costs us nothing and saves you an estimate appointment.
Repair or replace — how to tell before you spend anything
This is the question behind almost every call, and the honest answer is usually cheaper than the one you will get from a company that only sells replacements.
Go out and push on a post at its base. If it moves and the wood is soft where it meets the dirt, that post is finished — but the ones on either side of it may have years left. Count how many move. A few bad posts in a hundred feet of fence is a repair, and a good one will outlast the rest of the run. If most of the line moves, or the rails are pulling away from the posts along the whole fence, you are past repair, and patching it is paying twice to delay the same job.
Decks work the same way but upside down. The boards are what you see and the framing is what matters. Soft boards over solid joists is a surface job. Soft boards because the joists underneath have been holding water is a structural job, and new boards laid over tired framing is the single most common way homeowners pay for the same deck twice. We look underneath before we quote the top.
Send photos of the full fence line or deck, plus a couple of close-ups at the base of the worst posts, and we will tell you which of these you have — before anyone drives out.
Why the fence companies do not call you back
A dedicated fence contractor is built to price and install full replacements. That is the crew size, the material order, and the day rate their business runs on. A request to reset three posts and straighten a ten-foot section does not fit that model, so it sits in the inbox.
We are built the other way around. Small, defined exterior repair is normal work here, not an interruption — the same visit can fix the gate, replace the pickets, and re-secure the deck railing on the way out. And when a project genuinely is a build rather than a fix, we do that too: posts, beams, and structures that have to be square and stay square.
What we build and repair outside
Fences and gates. Post replacement and resetting, leaning sections straightened or rebuilt, rails and pickets, new runs, and gates — including converting a failing wood-post run to steel posts with wood pickets when the same stretch keeps coming down. Gates are their own skill: most sagging gates are a hinge, post, and diagonal-bracing problem, not a gate problem, and swapping the gate without fixing the post buys you a year.
Decks and porches. Board replacement, railing repair and replacement, stair treads and stringers, re-securing loose framing and ledger connections, and rot repair where the deck meets the house.
Pergolas, patio covers, and shade structures. Heavy timber posts and beams over an existing slab, attached or freestanding, with the footing depth our soil actually requires. Set square on the concrete, posts plumb, spans consistent, exterior-grade connections and fasteners throughout.
Privacy screens and slat walls. Patio edges, hot tubs, pool equipment, and AC units. Vertical slats spaced to screen sightlines while still letting air through — shade and privacy both matter on a West Houston patio, and a solid wall gives you one at the cost of the other.
Exterior trim and porch carpentry. Fascia, soffit, column wrap, porch ceilings, and the rot repair that shows up where wood meets brick or concrete.
Planters, benches, and outdoor storage. Built-in seating, garden boxes, and storage benches built to the space instead of ordered to fit it.
Why outdoor wood fails here, specifically
Three things do most of the damage in this market, and understanding them is what separates a repair that holds from one you redo in two years.
The soil line. Posts rot at grade, not at the top. Clay holds water against the buried portion, and wet-dry cycling works the post loose in its hole. The pickets above stay presentable, which is why a fence looks fine until the day it does not. When a run has failed twice, the answer is usually to get wood out of the ground — steel posts carrying wood pickets — rather than to reset the same material in the same hole.
Movement. Expansive clay lifts and drops. That is why footing depth on a pergola or patio cover is not a place to save money, and why a structure set shallow racks out of square in its second summer.
Wind. Straight-line winds, not water, are what flattened fences across this area after Beryl in 2024 and again in the February 2026 storms. A fence that comes down in a storm usually had a post problem before the storm — the wind just found it.
After a storm
When a front comes through and takes down fences across half the neighborhood, the dedicated fence crews book out for weeks. That is exactly when a leaning section or two turns into a dog getting out and a pool that is suddenly not enclosed.
Send photos of what came down. We will tell you whether it is a section repair, a post reset, or a run that needs rebuilding, and we will be straight about when we can get there rather than holding a date we cannot keep. If it is an urgent safety issue — an open gate line around a pool, a fence panel on a driveway — say so, and see after-hours and urgent repairs.
What drives the number
Outdoor pricing is mostly geometry and access. Linear feet of fence or square feet of deck sets the floor. Then: how much is genuinely repair versus rebuild; whether you are in pressure-treated pine or cedar; whether posts get reset in concrete or converted to steel; how hard the work area is to reach with materials through a side gate; how deep the footings need to go; and whether lighting or fans are going into the structure.
We price outdoor work three ways depending on what it is — booked hourly time for small defined repairs, a fixed price for a scoped repair, and a project quote for structures. Send photos and we will tell you which one you are looking at before you commit to anything.
Power in the structure
Fans, downlights, and outlets under a pergola or patio cover are worth deciding on before framing, because adding them afterward means opening finished work. Licensed electricians are brought in for any part of the job that requires a license, and we handle their scheduling as part of the same project so you get one estimate and one point of contact. Elevate Your Space Handyman is not advertising as a licensed electrician or electrical contractor — we scope and manage the work, and licensed electricians perform the regulated portion. See electrical services for how that works.
When the backyard is part of something bigger
Outdoor projects often arrive attached to something else — a patio cover that goes in while the interior is being painted, a privacy wall that goes up when the pool equipment moves, a deck rebuild alongside a door replacement. Running those as one project instead of three contractors is the point of whole-project remodeling. Indoors, the same crew does custom carpentry and built-ins; outdoors it is the same measuring and the same finish standards, in weather-rated material.
See our work
Our wood pergola and privacy wall shows how these projects come together — posts set on an existing concrete patio, beam and rafter package built to consistent spans, and a vertical slat wall spaced for screening without killing the airflow. More examples are in Our Work — outdoor projects.
We work throughout Katy, Fulshear, Cypress, Richmond, and West Houston.
Send photos and we will tell you what you are dealing with
Photos of the fence line, the deck, or the patio, plus rough dimensions, are enough for us to tell you whether this is a booked repair visit or a project quote — and whether you are looking at a repair or a rebuild. That answer is free, and it is usually the one that saves you the most money.
Wind and rot do not wait for a convenient month. The sooner we see it, the more likely the answer is a repair.
Communities we serve
This service is available throughout Katy and West Houston, including these master-planned communities:
View all service areas →Frequently Asked Questions
Will you repair part of a fence, or do I have to replace the whole thing?
We repair sections. Dedicated fence companies are set up to price a full replacement, so a leaning ten-foot run or three rotted posts often does not get a return call. That is exactly the work we take. If we look at it and the framing is far enough gone that a repair will not hold, we will say so and price the rebuild honestly instead of selling you a patch twice.
How do I know whether I need a repair or a whole new fence?
Push on a post at the base. If it moves and the wood is soft at ground level, that post is done — but its neighbors may be fine. Count how many are soft. A handful of bad posts in a long run is a repair. If most of them move, or the rails are pulling loose along the whole line, you are past repair and paying twice to pretend otherwise. Send us photos of the fence line and a couple of close-ups at the base of the worst posts and we will tell you which one you have before anyone comes out.
Why do fence posts rot at the ground in this area?
The soil line is where the wood stays wet. Our clay holds moisture against the post, the ground swells and shrinks through wet and dry cycles, and the post fails at grade while the pickets above it still look fine — which is why a fence can look serviceable right up until a windy day. Steel posts with wood pickets are the usual fix when the same run keeps failing, because the part in the ground is no longer wood.
Cedar or pressure-treated pine?
Pressure-treated pine costs less up front and is what most builder fences in these neighborhoods were framed with. Cedar holds up better against rot and insects and takes stain more evenly, and in this climate a well-built cedar fence is generally quoted at a twelve-to-twenty-year life depending on grade, post material, maintenance, and storm exposure. If you are matching an existing run, we will tell you what you already have before you pay for an upgrade you cannot see.
Do I need a permit for a fence or a deck?
It depends on which jurisdiction you are actually in, and many homes with a Katy mailing address sit outside the City of Katy limits in unincorporated Harris or Fort Bend County. Fort Bend County's permit triggers are things like a fully enclosed structure or concrete slab of 400 square feet or more, work in a floodplain or flood-prone area, large fill or excavation, and driveway connections to a county road — an open pergola or a replacement fence usually falls outside them. Inside the City of Katy, a building permit is required for most construction and property improvements. We will tell you which category your project is in rather than guessing.
Can you add lights, a fan, or an outlet to a pergola or patio cover?
Yes, and it is worth deciding before the structure is framed — running power afterward means opening finished work. Licensed electricians are brought in for any part of the job that requires a license, and we manage their scheduling so it stays one project, one estimate, and one point of contact. Elevate Your Space Handyman is not advertising as a licensed electrician or electrical contractor.
How long does an outdoor project take?
A gate rebuild or a handful of posts and pickets is usually a single visit. Deck board and railing repair is typically one to two days. A pergola, patio cover, or privacy wall over an existing slab commonly runs two to four days on site depending on size and finish. We will give you a real window when we quote it, and tell you if material lead time is going to move it.
Do you handle storm and wind damage?
Yes. Straight-line winds are what take fences down here, and after a widespread event the dedicated fence companies book out for weeks. Send photos of what came down and we will tell you whether it is a section repair, a post reset, or a run that needs rebuilding — and we will be straight with you about timing rather than holding a spot we cannot keep.
Do you stain or seal fences and decks?
Yes, as part of a build or as its own job. New pressure-treated lumber needs to dry before it will take a finish, so staining is often scheduled as a return visit rather than done the same week — we will tell you which applies to your project instead of rushing a coat onto wet wood.
Next step
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