Fence & Gate Repair in Los Angeles

Fence and gate repair is the work of restoring a residential perimeter — wood pickets, vinyl panels, chain link, or a mix — back to a state where the gate swings true, the line is plumb, and nothing is rotted, leaning, or splintered. The work covers a wide range. On the small end, you have a sticky gate latch that won't catch, a single broken board, or a sagging gate that drops when you open it. In the middle, you have rotted ground-line boards that need replacement, posts that have lost their concrete, or torn chain-link mesh after a tree branch came down. On the large end, you have full section reset after a car backed into the fence, a row of three or four posts that all rotted at the same time, or a vinyl panel run that cracked from sun and wind exposure. Most LA homeowners book fence repair before listing a property, after a windstorm, or when a neighbor finally complains about the leaning section.

Los Angeles climate creates a specific set of fence problems that you don't see in colder, wetter cities. The Mediterranean weather cycles between long dry stretches and occasional heavy storms, so wood expands and contracts more than it would in a stable climate. Cedar and redwood pickets warp in the sun, pressure-treated pine cups and twists, and the ground-line where soil meets wood stays dry most of the year but soaks during winter rains — exactly the moisture cycle that breeds rot. Older homes in Pasadena, Hancock Park, Mar Vista, and parts of Eagle Rock often have original 30-plus-year-old wood fences with posts that look fine above ground but have rotted into a soft pulp at the soil line, where you can push them with a hand and feel them give. Hollywood Hills and Beverly Hills properties on winding, high-traffic roads need their backyard privacy fences kept tight, and any sag or gap shows from the street. Coyote pressure has pushed some hillside homeowners to add hot-wire toppers or roll-bars to existing fence runs, which itself becomes a repair project when the topper sags or the wire shorts.

A complete fence and gate repair includes diagnosing the actual root cause — not just the symptom — replacing only what needs replacement, matching wood species and stain so the patch doesn't read as a patch, and finishing in a way that buys you another decade rather than another six months. A sagging gate, for example, is rarely a hinge problem. The hinges are usually fine; what's failed is the post the hinges are attached to, which has rotted internally or pulled out of its concrete footing. Replacing the hinges and re-hanging the gate without addressing the post means the gate will sag again within months. A vetted pro will probe the post with an awl, check the concrete collar for movement, and tell you whether the right fix is a $180 re-hang or a $500 post replacement. Same logic applies to broken boards: if the bottom rail is rotted, replacing one picket just shifts the failure point — the new picket will pull loose at the same place because the rail can't hold a fastener anymore.

Your gate sags, drags on the concrete, or won't latch without lifting it. This is the single most common fence call in LA — a gate that worked fine three years ago now scrapes the pad every time you open it, and the latch sits a quarter-inch below where it needs to be. The cause is almost always the hinge-side post tilting toward the gate from the gate's weight, sometimes combined with hinge wear. A pro can usually re-hang on the existing post with a turnbuckle diagonal brace and tighter hinges for $180-320, or tell you the post itself needs replacement for $280-580 if the wood is shot.

Boards along the bottom of the fence are soft, splintering, or visibly rotted. This is the LA standard failure mode — the ground-line two inches of every wood board absorbs moisture during winter rains, dries out in summer, and after eight to twelve years the wood fibers break down. You can press on the boards and feel them give. Single board replacement runs $80-160 per board, and most jobs in this category have three to six boards rotted across one section of fence. If you catch it early — before the rail or post is also affected — you save the bigger repair down the line.

A post is leaning, wobbly when you push the section above it, or visibly rotted at the base. Post replacement is the heaviest residential fence work because it requires digging a 30-inch-deep hole alongside the existing concrete footing, breaking out the old concrete, plumbing a new pressure-treated 4x4 or 6x6, and pouring fresh concrete with proper bracing while it cures. Expect $280-580 per post in LA labor, and budget for it to take half a day per post. If three or four posts are rotted at the same time — which happens when the original install was the same age — getting them all done in one visit saves on mobilization.

A car, falling tree branch, fallen camphor tree, or windstorm took out a whole section. After major damage the question is whether the posts on either end of the damaged section survived. If they did, you're looking at a section reset — three to four boards plus possibly a rail — for $480-820. If a post went down with the section, the price climbs because the post replacement comes on top. File the homeowner's insurance claim before scheduling the repair if it's storm or vehicle damage and the dollars are above your deductible — the pro can document with photos for the claim.

You're prepping the property for sale, an open house, or end-of-lease walkthrough and the fence is the weak spot in the curb appeal story. Buyers walk the perimeter. A leaning fence, a sagging gate, a row of mismatched replacement boards in unfinished pine next to weathered cedar — these read as deferred maintenance and get priced into the offer. A focused $400-900 fence refresh visit usually pays for itself several times over in the offer price, and pros can sequence the work so the new wood gets a stain match before the showing.

Verify what's been verified. Every Shatun Brothers fence and gate repair pro verifies their identity through Persona ID + selfie liveness before they list: government-issued ID through Persona, current general liability insurance certificate, and California state license where the job exceeds the $500 CSLB handyman scope. Most repairs — single board swaps, gate re-hangs, latch replacements — fall under the exemption. Multi-post replacements, full-section rebuilds, and any fence run over 6 feet tall in setback areas can push above the exemption and require a licensed contractor; we route those jobs only to pros who hold the appropriate license.

Match the pro's wood and material experience to what you have. Cedar and redwood are the premium choices in LA — both have natural rot resistance and weather to a soft gray when left untreated. Pressure-treated pine is cheaper and lasts 15-20 years if properly installed. Vinyl is mid-tier in price and lasts 20-30 years but cracks under impact and discolors over time. Galvanized chain link is industrial-cheap and lasts indefinitely if the coating stays intact. A pro who works mostly in vinyl may not be the right fit for matching a 1950s redwood fence in Hancock Park, and vice versa. Ask which materials the pro handles regularly and whether they can source matching wood for your existing fence.

Ask how they diagnose the root cause before quoting. The classic LA fence mistake is paying for a gate re-hang when the actual problem is a rotted post, then watching the gate sag again three months later. A pro should probe the suspect post with an awl or screwdriver, push on it to test for movement at the concrete collar, and look at the bottom rail. If the diagnosis is just a visual glance and an immediate quote, you may be paying for a symptom fix that won't hold.

Read the recent reviews, not the lifetime average. A pro with 80 reviews averaging 4.8 stars but recent reviews mentioning gates that sagged again or boards that came loose is heading the wrong way. We show the last 10 reviews on every pro profile so you see the trajectory, not just the historical score. Pay attention to whether reviewers mention the work holding up after a season — fence repair that fails reveals itself quickly under LA's wet-dry cycle.

Get the HOA expectation handled before booking. Homes in HOA-managed neighborhoods across the Westside, parts of the Valley, and master-planned communities often have strict rules on fence height, picket style, post-cap profile, stain color, and even hinge type. The HOA architectural review can require a fence to be torn out and redone at the homeowner's expense if it doesn't match approved specs. Confirm with your HOA before the pro starts work — show them photos of the planned material and ask for written sign-off if the fence is in a visible setback.

Confirm what's included: haul-away of old material, stain or paint match, post-cap or topper replacement, and warranty period on the work. Removing old rotted posts and broken boards generates a surprising amount of debris — a single section reset can produce a half-pickup load. Some pros include haul-away in the quote; others charge $80-150 extra. Stain matching is typically a separate line item if the new boards are bare wood. Get the scope in writing before the work starts so the final invoice doesn't surprise you.

Some fence repairs are reasonable DIY for a confident homeowner, and some absolutely aren't. Latch swap is the easiest job on the list — a basic gravity latch costs $20 at any hardware store, takes 15 minutes with a screwdriver, and even if you buy the wrong one you can return it. Single board replacement is also approachable: pull the old board with a pry bar, cut a new board to length, screw or nail it to the existing rails. Plan an hour, budget $15-30 in materials, and accept that the new board will be a different shade of brown than the surrounding weathered wood until it ages in. A sagging gate that just needs a turnbuckle brace and tighter hinges is also DIY-able — a $25 turnbuckle from Home Depot, an hour of work, and the gate is back to closing properly.

Post replacement is the line where DIY gets hard. Digging a 30-inch-deep, 12-inch-wide hole through LA's hardpack clay summer soil is brutal work without a power auger. Even with one, breaking out the old concrete footing typically requires a sledgehammer, a chisel, and patience. Setting the new post plumb in two directions while wet concrete cures takes either two people with bracing or one person with serious bracing skill. The concrete itself has a working time of 60-90 minutes — if you don't have everything ready before you start mixing, you'll pour concrete that's already setting around a post that's not fully plumb, and you'll be looking at the same problem in five years. Most homeowners who attempt post replacement DIY for the first time end up with a post that's slightly out of plumb, which then telegraphs through the next ten years of fence sag.

Hire a pro for any of these: a post is rotted and needs replacement, you need three or more posts done together, a whole section is down after impact damage, the fence is over 6 feet tall, the work is in a setback subject to HOA architectural review, or the gate is a heavy double-leaf or vehicle-rated gate. Also hire a pro if the fence is on a property line and the neighbor has any stake in how it gets done — a rebuilt fence that crosses a survey line by an inch can become a legal dispute, and a vetted pro carrying GL insurance is the right party to do that work, not you with a borrowed auger.

Reusing a rotted post when re-hanging a sagging gate. This is the most common mistake in LA fence work. The gate sags, the homeowner or a cheap handyman tightens the hinges and adds a brace, the gate hangs straight for a month or two, and then the post — which was the actual problem all along — keeps rotting and the gate sags again. The hinges aren't the problem; the post is the problem. A proper diagnosis includes probing the post at ground line with an awl, pushing the post to test for movement at the concrete collar, and replacing the post if the wood is soft or the footing is loose. Spending $400 on a re-hang plus a post replacement is far cheaper than spending $250 on three re-hangs over five years that all eventually require the post anyway.

Mismatching wood species when replacing boards. A row of bright pressure-treated pine pickets installed next to weathered 25-year-old redwood looks exactly like what it is — a budget patch. Worse, pressure-treated pine and redwood age differently: pine grays to a flat dull tone, redwood weathers to a silver-gray with character. Six months later the patch is more obvious than it was at install. The fix is matching species (use redwood pickets to repair a redwood fence, cedar to repair cedar), and applying a stain match if the existing fence has been stained. If you absolutely have to mix species for budget reasons, stain the new wood to match before nailing it up.

Skipping post-cap or topper installation on new wood posts. Wood posts rot from the top, not the bottom. Water sits in the end grain of the post top, soaks into the wood, and over five to ten years the rot works downward through the post core. A simple 4x4 post cap — copper, galvanized steel, or treated wood — costs $4-12 each and turns a post that would last 10-15 years into one that lasts 25-30 years. New posts going in without caps is the single biggest preventable mistake in residential fence work, and it's especially relevant in LA where the sun keeps the post tops dry most of the year but the winter rains soak them and don't dry quickly with no cap to redirect water.

No expansion gap between fence boards. LA's humidity swings between under 30% in summer dry stretches and over 75% during rainy weeks. Wood boards expand and contract by 1/8 to 1/4 inch across their width with that humidity range. Boards installed tight to each other have nowhere to expand, so they cup, warp, or pop fasteners when they swell in winter. A 1/8 to 1/4 inch gap between boards (a popsicle stick or a quarter held edge-on works as a spacer) accommodates the movement and keeps the boards flat. A pro who installs boards tight is either rushing or not familiar with how wood moves in LA's climate.

Ignoring HOA fence rules and ending up with a tear-out order. Master-planned neighborhoods across the Westside, parts of the Valley, and HOA communities like Westchester or Sherman Oaks Estates often have written architectural standards covering fence height, picket profile, post style, cap design, stain color, and even gate hardware. A homeowner who does a fence repair without checking the rules can get a violation notice 30 days later requiring the fence to be torn out and redone at their own expense — usually for thousands of dollars. Before any visible fence work starts, check the HOA architectural standards, and if the work crosses any threshold (height change, material change, color change), submit it for approval first. A pro who works regularly in HOA neighborhoods will ask about this; if they don't, raise it yourself.