Landscape guys - price check on aisle 3
 

I recently replaced 96' of fence and built a pergola, but my wife thinks I spent too much money. While I don't get my building supplies at Nieman-Marcus, I also don't try to scrounge materials at the county dump.

What I would like to do is describe what I've built, and then you tell me what you think it would have cost for a "real" builder to do it.

Fence
96' long, 8' high
12' Sch40 galvanized poles (x14),
6 Simpson fence clamps, 8' 2x8 redwood board on each pole
vertical composition:
6 1x12 redwood
1 2x10 pressure-treated bottom board
1 1x8 redwood across the top
stained
various fastenrs/screws, etc

Pergola
100' 2x2 1/8" steel tubing
20' 2x2 3/16" steel tubing
20' 2x3 1/8" steel tubing
4'x16' 3x3 galvanized fence mess (6 pieces)

These pix only show 1/2 the fence - the other half is to the left behind the shop

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1456768723.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1456768713.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1456768734.jpg

The only thing I'd do differently is change the 14 Redwood 2x8x8 to pressure treated. Not because they need to be PT, but you can't see them and PT will be cheaper than Redwood. That's a pretty minor cost savings overall. You also didn't include concrete in your description and I would assume you used 24 bags of hot mud.

You used good materials and the design achieves almost zero waste. This saves time, dump fees, and material cost.

A pro couldn't shave the margin on that fence much outside of simple bulk purchase pricing on lumber. I suppose you could have used cedar? But you also could have used chain link. So that sort of comparison is not really helpful.

I was quoted $40/ft for a pressure treated 6' privacy fence. We dont use Redwood here, no idea on cost delta.

It looks good now, but in a couple years...
Are you planning to vine the pergola?

I disagree on using pressure treated rather than galvanized. However, you should use a thicker walled pole to hold up to wind loading on a 8' fence. The side loading can be significant. I'd also set them in concrete.

This is all probably too late, so I hope it holds up. Cost? I have no idea. I built a 120' redwood fence last year. The whole thing was under a grand, I know that. A pro might charge twice that.

How many chickens?? :D

Yes, the pergola will be vined (hence the wire mesg)

The poles are set in 4' of concrete, roughly 18" wide. The pergola is tied into the fence in this section, which helps reinforce it.

Do you really think 2" Sch40 pipe is too thin for this application? (it's academic at this point)

My total materials came out to $3686, which gives me a cost per foot of about $38.40 (not counting the pergola)

Not too late to add gusset plates!

a guesstimate is around $3500. A couple of grand in materials and 1500 for labour. Give or take.

The redwood 2x8 are attached to the poles to hold the 1x12 - they're not sunk into the ground.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1456780945.jpg

Spent more than she thought you could have for the same or better result or just too much in general?

Depending on which one you can rationalize it all you want but you're still sleeping under the pergola this week.

It looks great now, and it will look better later on.
You will look at it every single day.

There is no price on that.

(Chain link or vertical would have been ugly imo. That is beautiful and makes the space appear larger. Nice choices.)

I think the root cause is she doesn't have a grasp on what materials cost, and the extrapolations thereof. I kept all the receipts and showed her, but she still thinks it could have been done cheaper.

There are two kinds of people I don't understand in this world:
1). Dumpy trailers with a $60k custom SUV.
2). Million dollar homes with cheap plastic mailboxes.

Widebody,

I'm late to this thread, and I saw the costing a few posts above.
When I was reading through your list, I was thinking ~$4000 without labor. Of course those are little Canadian dollars.
Redwood is hard to come by here in the north east.
Sometimes I look back to what I was paying for building materials 35 years ago. Sigh.

Looks good.
Best
Les

The fence and the Redwood looks great. Now treat that with some Penofin. Just don't wad up your rag as it dries. You WILL burn your house down.

Tell your wife this, there are different grades of Redwood. What you have there is not the most expensive. Wait until she hears about the the select, kiln dried grades.

8' fence? Fire code? Be careful with that in case something happens, you have to face the music with insurances or lawyers. Check with your city on that.