Handyman in Evergreen, Colorado

Evergreen is a genuinely different repair environment from the flats, and pretending otherwise is how mountain homes end up with work that fails in two seasons. You're at 7,000 feet with UV intensity the plains don't see, wind that finds every loose fastener, and freeze-thaw cycles that pry apart anything water got into over the winter.

The practical result is that exteriors here wear roughly twice as fast. Deck boards that would last a decade in Lakewood grey out and cup in half that. South and west elevations take a beating that north faces don't. I spec accordingly rather than using what would be perfectly fine down the hill, and I'll tell you when something is worth repairing versus when you're better off replacing it properly once. I build decks as well as repair them, so that recommendation isn't shaped by only doing one of the two. Indoors, the most common Evergreen call by far is the water heater — mountain households run them hard, and nobody wants to lose hot water up here in January.

Evergreen housing runs from 1970s and 80s mountain A-frames and cedar-sided homes through 1990s and 2000s custom builds up Upper Bear Creek and Hiwan. Most properties are on larger lots, many on wells and septic, and a good share have decks that are structurally central rather than decorative. Wildfire mitigation shapes a lot of exterior decisions here — material choices and clearances that don't come up in the metro come up constantly in Evergreen.