GerryFinds you the right pro in Lafayette
Gerry is an A.I. assistant. He can point you at a trade and take your details, and a person handles the work.
This is the work of putting a deck or fence back to solid: refastening loose boards, straightening or resetting posts that have started to lean, and getting a gate to swing true and latch again. Most of the time it is a repair, not a rebuild, so the first real step is figuring out whether the problem is the surface boards or the structure holding them up. A board you can replace in an afternoon. A post rotted at the ground line is a different conversation.
Acadiana is hard on anything wood and outdoors. The humidity almost never lets a deck fully dry, so boards cup, screws back out, and rot works quietly from the underside where you never look. Our clay soil holds water and swells, then shrinks in a dry spell, and that movement is what walks fence posts out of plumb and cracks the concrete around them. Heavy rain and the runoff after it keep the bottom of every post and joist damp, which is exactly where Formosan termites and ordinary wood rot both start. Add a hurricane season that leans on every fence line in the parish, and it makes sense that gates in Lafayette, Youngsville, and Broussard tend to stop latching a season or two before anything else fails.
A handy homeowner can handle a fair amount of this. Swapping a few deck boards, driving new screws into ones that have loosened, replacing a picket, and adjusting or replacing gate hinges are all reasonable weekend jobs if you are comfortable with basic tools. Where you should stop is anything holding weight. Resetting posts, replacing rotted joists or beams, and rebuilding the framing under a deck are structural, and a deck that fails while people are standing on it hurts someone. If your screwdriver found soft wood in the posts or framing, or the whole deck moves when you lean on the rail, get a pro to look before you put more weight on it.
Every question is optional. The more you answer the faster somebody can come back with a real number, and the better we can match you to the right person, but a name and a number is enough to get started.
As much detail as you feel like giving, as little as you have to. A photo helps most.
Often just the boards or a couple of posts, especially if the damage is in one section. The deciding factor is the structure: if most of the posts are still solid, repair usually makes sense. Once a majority of posts are rotted or leaning, patching section by section starts costing more effort than it is worth.
Gates take the most abuse because they move, and they hang off one post that carries all that weight. In our soil that post shifts with the wet and dry seasons, and the gate sags until it drags or misses the latch. Sometimes it is just a hinge or a turnbuckle to square it back up, sometimes the hinge post needs resetting.
You often cannot tell from the outside, and in Acadiana it can be both. Rot leaves wood soft, dark, and crumbly, usually where water sits. Termites leave the surface looking almost intact but hollow, with mud tubes or thin galleries inside. If you find either near posts or framing, have it looked at before you rebuild on top of it.
It depends on where the bounce comes from. A little spring in a long board span is normal. Movement you feel in the whole deck, or in the rail when you lean on it, points to the framing or the connections, and that is worth checking before you host anyone on it. Soft wood at the posts or joists is the sign to stop and call someone.
Gerry is an A.I. assistant. He can point you at a trade and take your details, and a person handles the work.