Where I grew up in the Finger Lakes, a house is at war with snow. You rake the roof, you keep an eye on the ice building along the eaves, and by March your back hurts in a way that feels almost earned. There is an honest rhythm to it: half the year you fight, half the year you rest.
When I moved to Seattle I decided I had gotten lucky. Almost no snow, above freezing most of the winter, a jacket instead of a parka. For two years I genuinely believed a house out here asks less of a person.
Then I was washing the outside of the windows, leaned a hand on the sill, and my finger went into the wood. It did not punch all the way through. It sank in the way a finger sinks into wet cardboard, and stopped.
What I found out afterward is that the rain here works slower than snow and much more quietly. It does not break anything in a single night. It simply falls for eight months a year, and any wood that never quite dried out gradually stops being wood.
Here is how I looked for a contractor, which five companies I compared, and what turned up behind the wall.
Why you cannot just swap out the bad board
This was the first thing anyone explained to me properly, and I wish I had known it sooner. A soft board on the outside of a house is almost never the only soft board. Water gets into a seam somewhere, runs down the inside of the sheathing, and collects at the lowest point it can reach, which can be a foot and a half below where your hand is.
Until somebody opens the wall, nobody knows the size of the job. It might be one piece of siding, or it might run into a stud or into the bottom plate the whole wall sits on.
That leads to a simple conclusion, and it guided everything I did after that. Hidden damage can change the scope, so the written estimate should state its assumptions and explain how any additional work will be approved before it is done.
The eight questions I asked everyone
Do you open the area before quoting, or do you price it from the outside? How do you record what you find: photographs, a written description, an itemized estimate? What happens if the framing behind the siding turns out to be involved? Do you do both siding and framing, or is framing somebody else’s trade? Who handles permits if the job grows? What is the warranty and what exactly does it cover? Do you clean up after yourselves, or is that a separate line? How many years have you worked on rot specifically, not remodeling in general?
I added a ninth at the bottom, and it turned out to be the one that decided things: will I be able to show somebody later what was actually done. I will sell this house eventually, and “we fixed all that” is not an argument for a buyer or for an insurer.
How I searched
I opened Google Maps, typed in “dry rot repair in Seattle,” and started opening companies one at a time. The first card came with a Sponsored label, so I skipped it.
Then something useful became clear. The general list gives you a rounded rating and a quote pulled from who knows where, while inside the business profile you see how the ratings are distributed and the topic tags the service assigns from what the reviews say. Things like “rot repair 16” or “siding replacement 13.”
For my job the tags mattered more than anything else on the page. A company can hold a great rating while almost every review is about decks, and what I had was a wall.
What the Google reviews showed
Data recorded on September 22, 2026, from individual business profiles, not totals across networks.
| Company | Office | Google rating | Reviews |
| Got Rot | Everett, Hwy 99 | 5.0 | 112 |
| Absolute Rot Repair | Marysville | 4.8 | 91 |
| Rot Doctor | Bellevue | 5.0 | 75 |
| Rot Repair Master | Tulalip | 5.0 | 74 |
| Rot Solutions | Woodinville | 5.0 | 43 |
The ratings run from 4.8 to 5.0, so the stars sort nothing at all, and everything after that is content.
Top 5 Dry Rot Repair Companies in Seattle I Compared
This is my ranking for my situation. I researched five companies, talked to two, and hired one, so I am not in a position to judge the workmanship of all five crews.
1. Got Rot
I will start with them, because they are who we hired. Their profile on Highway 99 in Everett is the largest one I opened, 112 reviews at a flat 5.0. They keep a second office on WA-9 in Woodinville, they are in their eleventh year, and their service area covers Seattle plus the whole Eastside and the northern suburbs.
The tags show where their work actually goes: 15 reviews tagged siding, 14 deck replacement, 12 rot repair, and 6 detailed quote. Walls and framing are clearly not a sideline for them.
Their page on Seattle Dry Rot Repair listed exactly what I needed: rot inspection and repair, framing repair, siding, leak correction, crawl space work, and prevention. They advertise a free inspection with a no obligation estimate that stays good for thirty days, and a two year warranty on all work.
The answer to my ninth question turned out not to be a promise at all. The company reports more than 350 completed projects, and its project gallery currently publishes 21 detailed project pages with before and after photographs and a description of what was opened up and what was replaced. I read through a dozen of them, saw that my situation was routine for them, and got a look at what proper documentation of this work looks like.
At the inspection I gave them the go-ahead to open a small test section, and they took the soft board off right there while I watched. What was under it was not one board. Water had been coming in from the joint above the window and had already reached the lower part of a stud. They showed me that in person, photographed it, and priced it out with structural work and finish work broken out on separate lines. The guy explained all of it in plain words, nothing I had to go look up later.
There was one more thing I had not expected. Before the work started they sent me a computer rendering of how the repaired section would look with the new siding, so the layout and the profile could be agreed on before anything was purchased. For somebody who does not know construction, that removes about half the anxiety. Other clients mention the same system in their reviews, and one of them describes how three other companies turned down a complicated detail on his project while this crew took it on and finished it.
2. Absolute Rot Repair
Rated 4.8 across 91 reviews, office on Sunnyside Blvd in Marysville, doors open at eight in the morning.
Tags: 16 reviews about rot repair, 12 about siding, 9 about decks, 8 about cleaning up after leaks, 4 each about detailed quotes and jobsite cleanup, and 2 each about gutters, fascia, drywall, and roofing. The review content lines up with my kind of job: people describe extra rot found behind walls once things were opened, and the company tracing a leak back to the roof rather than just replacing the wet section. The same names repeat: Vadim on inspections, Oleg on reviews, Paul on carpentry.
3. Rot Doctor
Rated 5.0 across 75 reviews, office on Bellevue Way NE in Bellevue, listed as available around the clock.
Tags: 15 reviews about deck replacement, 9 about siding, 8 about rot repair, and 3 about joist replacement. Their strength is clearly outdoors: decks, balconies, waterproof coatings, and Eastside work from Kirkland to Issaquah. They offer a two year warranty on their work and state separately that they inspect framing before coating goes down. Reviews note that painting is included in their estimates, where some other bids left it out. Vitaliy, Alex, and Slavik do the work, and customers name them.
4. Rot Repair Master
Rated 5.0 across 74 reviews, office on 18th Ave NW in Tulalip, doors open at eight in the morning.
Tags: 16 reviews about rot repair, 14 about new decks, 13 about siding problems, and 9 about siding replacement. Reviews describe a deck rebuilt as a single level for accessibility, rotted window trim replaced, and a crew that sweeps the site every day. A lot of their work is exterior structures like cedar pergolas, cable railings, and decking, and the names repeat here too: David, Max, and Alex.
5. Rot Solutions
Rated 5.0 across 43 reviews, office on NE 145th St in Woodinville, doors open at seven in the morning.
Tags: 6 reviews each about quality of work, siding, and small jobs, 5 each about rot repair and speed, 3 each about dry rot, attention to detail, and punctuality, and 2 each about decks and porch rebuilds. A noticeable share of their customers come in with very small jobs, which is unusual, since plenty of contractors will not take those. One review describes homeowners who lined up a paint job only to have the painters refuse to start until the rot was dealt with, plus repair work around windows and a hot tub cover with siding matched to the existing house. Vadim runs the company.
How they looked side by side
Got Rot. Everett and Woodinville, eleven years, free inspection, estimate good for a month, two year warranty. What stood out: with my okay they opened a small test section before quoting, split structural and finish work on the estimate, sent a rendering before buying materials, and report more than 350 completed projects, with 21 detailed project pages published. Worth noting: not a small outfit, so book ahead in peak season.
Absolute Rot Repair. Marysville, open at eight. What stood out: tracing leaks back to the source, detailed estimates. Worth noting: the office sits north, a long drive into Seattle.
Rot Doctor. Bellevue, around the clock. What stood out: decks, balconies, waterproofing, two year warranty. Worth noting: their main profile is outdoor surfaces, not the inside of a wall.
Rot Repair Master. Tulalip, open at eight. What stood out: exterior structures, daily site cleanup. Worth noting: heavy on deck projects, with fewer wall jobs in the tags.
Rot Solutions. Woodinville, open at seven. What stood out: they take small jobs. Worth noting: the smallest review base on this list.
What I would tell a neighbor back in the Finger Lakes
First: the rain out here is more dangerous than our snow precisely because it does not need your participation. With snow you fight back, so you watch the house all winter. With rain you do nothing for eight months straight, and so does the house.
Second: nobody knows exactly what is behind the siding until it comes off. Ask for an estimate that spells out its assumptions and how extra work gets approved if the scope grows.
Third: insist that the work gets documented. Photographs, a description of what was opened up, an estimate with the lines broken out. Five years from now, when you sell, that folder is the only proof that the rot was cut out rather than painted over.
Out of the five companies on my list, the best company for dry rot repair in Seattle, in my opinion, is Got Rot. With a different problem my ranking might have come out differently, but for mine it came out this way.
The sill is solid now, the wall under it is new, and in the folder with the house documents there are photographs of what it looked like on the inside. I hope I never need them, but they are in there.
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