Fence repair & restoration · Cricket Bend & Doyle Heights · 24/7 storm line

Most fences don’t need replacing. They need us.

Secondline straightens, re-posts, re-boards and re-hangs the fences other crews would rather sell you again — every repair post reset in concrete to the county frost line, every gate re-tuned twice, and an honest read on the day we walk it: fix, restore, or (rarely) replace.

Storm damage? Line leaning, gate off its hinges? (555) 671-3908, answered around the clock — triage inside 24 hours, porch photographs accepted.

Services

The repair sheet

01

Post replacement & re-plumb — $185/post

The old post and its concrete come out, the hole goes deeper, and the new one is set in fresh concrete to 42 inches — below the frost line, same as a new build. Most “dead” fences are four posts and a Tuesday.

02

Re-board & re-face — from $14/ln ft

New cedar boards on sound rails, crowns up, spacing matched to what already stands. When the bones are good the skin is cheap — and we tell you which yours is before we quote a thing.

03

Gate surgery — from $240

Hinges swapped to Grade-2 minimum, self-closers re-set, latches re-pinned where the arm actually looks for them. Builder-grade hardware dies in three hard seasons; we grade the replacement to the traffic your gate really gets.

04

The full restoration — from $1,900

Pressure-wash, board swap, retension, re-stain and a gate tune, on a line worth keeping. Roughly a third of what the replacement crews quoted the same yards last year — and that is not a coincidence, because we checked.

From last season’s invoices

The repair arithmetic

68%
the average saving against a rebuild, last 200 invoices
42 in
reset depth on every repair post — no shortcuts on a fix
5 yr
workmanship warranty — repairs carry the same one
24 hr
storm-line triage, in writing

What we do

Three rescues we see every week

The leaning line

The leaning line

A fence leans for one of two reasons: post rot at the grade line, or a shallow set the frost has been lifting an inch a year since the day it went in. We dig the worst post, read the concrete and the depth, and the diagnosis is usually standing in the hole with us. Reset below frost, the lean never comes back.

The rotten rail

Sprinkler-fed rot eats rails from the end-grain inward, and it always finds the cut the first builder didn’t seal. Rails come out crowned side up, ends sealed, boards re-hung in the same rhythm — the repair that is invisible a season later, which is the entire point of it.

The rotten rail
The sagging gate

The sagging gate

Nine gates in ten are not worn out — they are under-hung. Grade-2 hinges on a daily-use gate, a frame re-squared, a self-closer that closes from a whisper of a push. We grade the hardware to the use it gets and print the grade on the invoice.

Told when to replace

When more than forty percent of the posts are gone we say so and quote the rebuild — the read is free either way, and it is the same read we would want on our own yard.

Repairs built like new work

Frost depth, fresh concrete, crowned rails, sealed end-grain — a Secondline repair carries the same five-year workmanship warranty as a Secondline build, because it is one.

Every gate tuned twice

Once the day it re-hangs, once a month later after the wood has decided where it lives. The second visit is on us, forever, on every gate we touch.

Cricket Bend · Doyle Heights · 2025–2026

Rescues from this season

Six lines that were one estimate away from a skip. The captions name the rescue; the photographs argue the case better than the rates do.

The Pemberton line
The Pemberton line — eleven posts reset, standing straight
Okonkwo re-face
Okonkwo re-face — new boards, sound rails underneath
The schoolhouse gate
The schoolhouse gate — re-hung, self-closer reset
Storm triage on Vine Street
Storm triage on Vine Street — shored same day, rebuilt that week
A January reset
A January reset — dug through frost because it doesn’t wait
The Aldous restoration
The Aldous restoration — washed, re-stained, ten years younger

How it goes

From the porch call to tuned

The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.

  1. Hour one

    The porch call

    Photographs, three questions and a gut read: how far it leans, when the gate stopped latching, what the last crew said. If it sounds like four posts and a Tuesday, we say so on the phone.

  2. Day 1

    Shore & string

    We shore anything dangerous, pull the string line the length of the yard and dig one diagnostic post. The written quote — fix, restore or replace — follows the same day and holds for sixty days.

  3. Days 2–4

    Dig, set, cure

    Failed posts out with their concrete, new holes to 42 inches, posts plumbed and braced in fresh mix. The cure day is on the schedule; we do not hang rails on hope.

  4. Week 2

    Boards & tune

    Rails crowned, boards matched to the weathering of what stands, gates re-hung on graded hardware and tuned that day. The yard is swept before the truck backs out.

  5. Six weeks

    The check-back

    We come back, re-tune every gate we touched and re-shoot the string. Free, always — the repair is not finished until the wood has had a month to argue with us and lost.

Two crews quoted me eleven and fourteen thousand to replace what Secondline fixed for three. They reset nine posts, re-faced the street side and rehung a gate I had been lifting for two years. The invoice said exactly what the estimate said.
R. Pemberton · Nine posts and a re-face, Cricket Bend
The storm put a spruce through the back line on a Sunday. They answered on the second ring, shored it that afternoon, and the rebuild was finished inside the week — with the gate hardware upgraded to the grade it always needed.
G. Okonkwo · Storm rebuild, Vine Street, Doyle Heights
They told me my fence was worth saving before I told them my budget. That is the whole review — a repair company that repairs, with a warranty card that reads like a new build’s.
June Aldous · Full restoration, Cricket Bend

Asked on every porch call

Repair or replace — how do you actually decide?

Post by post, with a hole in the ground. If the rot stops at the grade line and the sets are honest, it is a repair; past about forty percent failed posts the arithmetic flips and we quote the rebuild, because re-boarding a dying skeleton is the most expensive way to buy two years.

Why did my fence lean in the first place?

Almost always a shallow set or dry-poured concrete from the original build — frost lifts an under-set post roughly an inch a year, and geometry does the rest. Our resets go to the county frost line in properly mixed concrete, which is why the repair carries a new-build warranty.

Can you match my weathered boards?

Close enough that the neighbours stop looking within a season — new cedar against weathered cedar reads for about a year, then the sun settles the argument. For front-garden lines we can source reclaimed boards where the match matters to the committee.

Can you storm-proof the line while you are in there?

That is the natural moment for it: retensioned rails, sealed end-grain and a hardware-grade swap on the gates, each as its own line on the repair quote. Cheaper than a second visit, and the October you does the thanking.

Send the porch photograph.

A read on the same day you send it, a written quote inside 48 hours, and a start date that respects the weather. Cricket Bend, Doyle Heights and the roads between.