Service Areas on the Mendocino Coast

Point Arena is where Joe Riboli has lived and built since 1985. California's smallest incorporated city sits on a bluff above Arena Cove, with the Point Arena Lighthouse standing at the westernmost point of the contiguous coast just north of town and the Garcia River winding out through the Stornetta lands to the sea. Between the Victorian-era homes along Main Street, the redwood cabins up Riverside Drive, the working buildings down at the pier and the bluff-top houses out toward the light, we have worked on a remarkable share of the buildings in this town.

Being the local contractor means we know what these houses are made of before we open a wall — old-growth redwood framing, plaster over shiplap, additions layered on across four or five decades. It also means we know what the weather does here: salt air off the point that eats fasteners and hardware, winter storms that drive rain sideways into every unsealed joint, and a permitting process that runs through the City, Mendocino County and, on bluff and view corridor projects, the Coastal Commission.

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North and south of us, the Mendocino coast is one long ribbon of Highway 1 running past Manchester's dunes, the sea stacks at Elk, the wooden bridge over the Albion River, the shaded lots of Anchor Bay, the river mouth at Gualala, the unpainted redwood of The Sea Ranch, and the ranch country around Stewarts Point. Each town has its own building stock and its own weather problems, but they share one thing: the Pacific is right there, and it is relentless.

Coastal construction here is not the same as building inland. Humidity almost never drops, shade keeps siding and decks damp year round, wind loads on open bluffs are severe, and ordinary galvanized hardware can rust through in a handful of seasons. Add well and septic systems, long rural driveways, county inspectors who cover a wide territory, and suppliers who do not always want to drive out this far, and you have a job that rewards someone who has done it a few hundred times.

That is the work we do — bathroom remodels, additions, decks, siding, dry rot repair and everyday fixes for full-time residents and second-home owners from Elk to Stewarts Point.