Every service below has its own Birch Bay page — cottage-to-current housing notes, Whatcom County permits, and salt-side install details.
This is the work Birch Bay homes ask of us — from beach cottages on the drive to Birch Bay Village and Sea Links. Flip through and picture your home next.
Get a Free Estimate →Birch Bay's housing tells its history: weekend beach cottages from the '50s–'70s along Birch Bay Drive, the gated streets of Birch Bay Village, golf-course homes at Sea Links, and waves of newer construction as the community shifted from summer getaway to year-round living. Many of those older cottages were built light — minimal sheathing, minimal flashing — and then asked to survive salt air and southwest wind off the bay full-time. That's where we find the soft walls. Newer homes fare better, but the bay still chalks paint, corrodes hardware, and tests every west-facing seal.
One thing many owners here don't expect: Birch Bay is unincorporated, so permits run through Whatcom County Planning & Development Services, not a city hall. We handle county permitting regularly — it's a different process with different timelines, and we build that into the schedule honestly.
…and the surrounding unincorporated county between Blaine and Ferndale.
Verified Google review"I hired Michael for our new Hardi siding install. We went with a special order color and could not be happier. He gave us options when we changed our mind in the beginning if we wanted to buy primed boards and then have it painted or go with already painted Hardi. I recommend going with already painted. His crew lead was awesome! The house looks fabulous and catches everyone eye as they walk by. I replaced all soffits as well with the Hardi board. I am looking forward to very little maintenance. It’s just stunning."
No pressure, no jargon — a clear path from first call to final inspection.
Call (360) 296-9380 or send the form — tell us a little about your home and what's failing.
We measure at your home, open up anything suspicious with your OK, and write a bid specific to your house — minimal boilerplate.
Permits pulled, work scheduled around the weather, and the final inspection passed before we call it finished.
Every bid is measured on site and itemized — these are the factors that actually change the number.
Wall area drives material; height drives scaffold time. A two-story home near Birch Bay Village prices differently than a rambler off Sea Links.
Siding replacement →What's behind the old siding is the honest unknown — we scope known rot into the bid and price discovered rot transparently, per repair.
Rot repair →Hardie ColorPlus, primed fiber cement, or engineered wood — we quote options side by side so you see the real difference.
Compare materials →Combining siding and windows saves one full mobilization and gets properly integrated flashing — the cheapest time to do windows is during a re-side.
Window replacement →Birch Bay was built as a place to visit, not to live — and its walls still show it. By the early 1900s, families from Bellingham and Vancouver were coming down for the summer, pitching tents and renting rustic cabins along the shore. The 1920s resorts made it a destination: clusters of small cabins, a store, a dance hall — all of it light-framed and seasonal.
The real cottage boom came after World War II. Small summer places went up along Birch Bay Drive and the side streets through the '50s, '60s, and '70s — many with minimal sheathing, minimal flashing, and no thought to winter, because nobody planned to be there in winter. Those are the homes we open up today and find walls that were never designed to dry out.
The first housing built for staying arrived in 1966, when ground broke on Birch Bay Village at the north end of the bay; houses were standing within a year, condominiums followed in the '70s, and the gated community now holds roughly 1,100 homes. Sea Links added its own gated pocket around the golf course built in 1983.
Then the community changed shape entirely. Birch Bay's population doubled from about 5,000 in 2000 to over 10,000 by 2020 as condominium and vacation-home construction accelerated, and cottages became year-round residences. The 2020 census counted about 5,900 housing units with roughly a quarter sitting vacant much of the year — a seasonal-home share that matters for exteriors, because an unwatched house hides a leak until it's a rot repair. Every era on this list fails its own way — and each one gets its own plan.
A free on-site estimate anywhere in Birch Bay — measured at your home, itemized, and specific to your house.
