A boathouse that has stood for a hundred years does not usually announce its problems politely. It announces them as a door that has started binding, a floor with a slope in it, a roof line that has gone wavy, or a gap where two things used to meet.
And then the owner faces a question that looks like a construction question but is at least half a regulatory one.
Start underneath, always
Every boathouse assessment we do starts below the waterline, because that is where the answer lives.
These buildings sit on timber cribs filled with stone, or on pilings driven into the bed of the lake. Those supports have been working every day for decades against ice expansion, wave action and freeze-thaw. When something above water goes out of true, the carpentry is almost never the cause. Something below has settled, spread, lost its stone, or been jacked.
So we get in the water. We check timber condition and stone retention in each crib, measure settlement across the footprint, and look for the pattern — because the pattern tells you the mechanism. Uniform settlement is one problem. One corner dropping is a different one. A structure that has rotated has been pushed by something.
An assessment that starts with the shingles is not an assessment.
The regulatory argument for restoring
Here is the fact that dominates this decision on Lake George.
Under the Adirondack Park Agency definition, a boathouse is a covered structure with direct water access, used only for storing boats and equipment, with no sanitary plumbing, not exceeding a single storey (roof rafters resting on the top plate of the first-floor wall), with a footprint of 1,200 square feet or less and a height of 15 feet or less.
A great many of the boathouses on this lake are larger than that, taller than that, or have a second storey. They exist because they predate the current rules, and they carry pre-existing non-conforming status.
That status is genuinely valuable — it is square footage and volume on a shoreline that cannot be recreated. And it can be lost. A rebuild that goes further than it needed to, or a project sequenced carelessly, can reset a structure to current limits. We have been called in to look at buildings where that had already happened and the owner did not know until the review.
So the calculation is not simply "what does each option cost". It is "what does each option cost, and what do I permanently give up".
When restoration is the right call
Restore when:
- The framing above is fundamentally sound and the problem is underneath. This is by far the most common situation, and it is a good one — you are doing marine work below and carpentry above, and keeping a building you could not rebuild.
- The structure is oversized relative to current rules. Almost always worth preserving.
- The building has character worth keeping. Old-growth timber, hand-cut joinery and proportions that nobody draws any more are not recoverable at any price.
- You can stage the work. Cribs one winter, roof and siding the next, interior after. Spreading a large project across seasons is often what makes it affordable.
What restoration actually involves: jacking and supporting the structure, rebuilding or replacing failed cribs and pilings, re-stoning, setting the building back down true, then renewing sills, floor framing, roof, siding and interior as required. Much of the marine work happens in cold water during the winter drawdown, which is one reason so few contractors offer it.
When rebuilding is the honest answer
Rebuild when:
- Sills and floor framing have gone as well as the cribs. At that point you are replacing nearly everything and calling it a restoration is a fiction.
- The structure is already within current limits, so there is no non-conforming status to protect.
- The building has been substantially altered already and has lost the character that made preservation worthwhile.
- You want something the existing footprint genuinely cannot give you and the numbers work within the current envelope.
The middle path most projects take
In practice the majority of boathouse work on Lake George is neither pure restoration nor pure rebuild. It is:
- New or rebuilt cribs and pilings — the structure becomes effectively new below the waterline
- Sills and floor framing renewed where they have failed
- Original framing, roof structure and character retained above
- Roof, siding and interior finishes renewed
The building comes out sound, dry and structurally new where it matters, while remaining — on paper and in fact — the same building. That is usually the best outcome available, and it is what we aim for by default.
What to ask whoever you hire
- Have you assessed below the waterline? If not, they have not assessed it.
- What is the settlement pattern, and what does it tell you about the mechanism?
- What is this building's regulatory status, and does your scope put it at risk?
- Can this be staged across seasons?
- Will you photograph and document what you find underneath?
The last one matters more than it sounds. Underwater work is invisible by definition. Photographic documentation of what was found and what was done is the only record you will have, and you will want it in twenty years.
On cost
We are not going to publish numbers, because they would mislead you. Boathouse work varies by an order of magnitude depending on how many cribs are failing, how the building can be supported, what access you have, and how many agencies review it.
What we will say is that the sequence matters for budget as much as for structure. Assess first, stabilise what is failing, then work upward across seasons. Owners who try to do the visible work first almost always end up doing it twice.
Lake George Docks
We design, permit and build docks, boathouses, cribs and shoreline structures across all 32 miles of Lake George, New York — and repair what the lake does to them. Questions about your own shoreline? Call (518) 260-9878 or send us the details.
