Wood Picket Fence Materials and Cost Sheet
Related Articles: Picket Fence, Fence Repairs, Wood Picket Design, Building and Installing
There are countless designs for wood picket fences. You can visit your local bookstore and jump on their in-store computer that houses Books in Print. I'll bet you come up with no less than 15 - 20 books on fences, designs, materials, etc. Just before writing this bulletin, I jumped on the Web and I came up with thousands of references to fences. Granted, some have nothing to do with wood picket fences, but I quickly found five sites that had photos of interesting designs!
Creating a material list for a picket fence is not that hard. You need to first decide upon your design and quite possibly build a one panel prototype or maybe a small scale model to see if you like the design. That is what I did.
Often you will buy certain materials in longer and wider quantities to create components. For example, I used 6 foot long fence posts. It makes sense to buy a 12 foot long post and cut it in half rather than buy 8 footers and waste 2 feet!
The same is true for the pickets. In my instance, I purchased 8 foot long pieces of 1x6 rough sawn cedar. Using my table saw and miter box saw, I was able to get six pickets per board. I had some very nice small kindling wood left over as well.
Here is a material list to construct an 8 foot long fence section at my house. Remember, each successive fence section requires exactly the same amount of material except you use one less 6 foot post. This list also leaves you with four extra pickets (you need only 38 pickets) for your next section. So, if you build a long fence like mine, you will need to keep this in mind as you could end up buying too many 1x6's or 4x4's!
Material List
You simply need the following materials:
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I priced out this package just before writing this column. The cost for the above materials is $58.77 plus tax here in Cincinnati. To construct a fence 48 feet long, you would spend just about $325.00 including tax. That isn't that bad, especially when you consider that you can build the fence with minimal skills!
Your neighbors will probably like you as did mine. In fact, we thought they would hate looking at their side of the fence. It turns out that they feel my wife and I are looking at the bad side!
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shane 14 Aug 2008, 20:16
i am building a picket fence, w/ 3.5" slats with 2.5" spacing. My post are
8' apart, where do i start putting my slats to make them work out evenly
spaced between post
Judy Kuhlman 22 Feb 2009, 10:17
I'm getting bids for installing a 200+ ft of dog ear wooden fence in my
yard. One of the installers said you can't install this fence in the
winter, because it won't last. The other two estimators are ready to go
with the installation. I don't know who to believe. Help?
bob 27 Mar 2009, 15:25
Judy - Cement usually takes 12-48 hours to cure, sometimes longer depending
on brand. Below freezing temps during this process will not allow the
concete to cure properly, leaving it not 100%. When you add wind and
weight, the fence posts hold a considerable amount of weight.
Lorna 07 May 2009, 17:48
Bob,
After getting estimates of upwards of $1500 to build a 50’ wide by 4 feet high fence I did my own research on materials cost and it aligned with the cost in your post. One contractor even told me that it would cost $600 for a driveway gate. Question – why then are the contractors charging me $1,150 for labor?? Thanks, Lorna
Bernadette 31 Jul 2009, 09:02
We are having a 5 ft dogeared fence put in our yard. We ordered cedar
slats but the builder called this morning and said the supplier was out of
cedar and would we mind using pressure treated southern pine.
What do you think abou this? Thanks!!!
isabel 13 Aug 2009, 12:39
I am having a 4 ft high pine pressure treated picket fence installed by a
friend. What would should I pay him for labor? What would 160 linear feet
of this fence cost to install? Any idea of price range? I am in
Rochester, NY. I realize this will vary greatly, but could I get a rough
range idea¿
katie 08 Jul 2010, 03:31
Hi :)
I have two questions: I need to install a 6 foot by 15 wide fence with a 47" gate cedar dog eared pickets no grass skirt the area is a straight line in an L shape the gate would be in the bottom of the L I am a female and the contractors in the area feel they should double/triple the price ??? so, I up for the challenge.However I need some direction or assitance with the shopping list and positioning of post my question 1) where do I position the 4x4 pressurer treated posts ? one at the beginning and another at the end of the fence should the third post be positioned at 7 1/2 feet? as this area confusses me, my question 2) where do I position the rails bottom and middle or just bottom and top rail? I would be grateful for any assistance you may have to offer and a shopping list would be very helpful if you have the time or any other advice you may have to offer Thank you katie View all comments |
