Four Northshore towns, one chimney crew

4 communities, one local crew. The routes are short on purpose. A crew that only works four neighboring towns spends its days on roofs rather than on the freeway, and it gets to know the houses as well as the streets: the Kingsgate Highlands subdivision in Kirkland, whose 957 lots went up between 1965 and 1976; the Ranch and Split Level homes of Uplake Terrace in Kenmore, platted in 1953; the Bothell register houses from the 1890s and 1900s; and Woodinville, where the median home was built in 1995.

Water is what wears a chimney out here. By WeatherSpark's count Kirkland's wet stretch lasts roughly 6.8 months, October 9 through May 1, and November alone averages around 8.2 inches of rain. Mortar and brick soak that up, and when a cold snap lands in December or January the trapped water freezes inside the masonry. Crowns crack, bricks shed their faces, and flashing that looked fine in August starts dripping into a ceiling by Thanksgiving. Shaking matters too: when USGS teams went street by street after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, roughly 60,000 chimneys in the region got a look and 1,556 of them had been damaged.

The person who climbs your roof is the person who writes your quote, so what you read on paper matches what we saw up there. We photograph the chimney before we start and again when we finish, and nothing gets repaired until you have approved a written price. Booking online shows the openings we actually have in your town, not a callback promise.