No price list. Here is what actually moves the number.

The seven things that move a price

In rough order of how much they matter. On almost every job we quote, the final number is explained by some combination of these — and once you know them you can usually predict where your own job is going to land relative to someone else’s.

1. Size, and specifically span

Not just how big, but how far unsupported. Doubling the width of a gate more than doubles its cost, because the frame has to get heavier to stay rigid, which makes the hinge side heavier, which makes the post and footing bigger. A long fence run is the opposite case — it scales close to linearly, so a hundred feet genuinely costs about twice what fifty does.

2. What it has to resist

A decorative garden panel and a guard railing on a second-storey balcony can look similar and cost very differently, because one has to meet a specified load and the other does not. Anything structural, anything that stops a fall, and anything a code requirement applies to gets designed against that requirement — and that shows up in the material thickness and the connections.

3. Infill and pattern

Plain vertical pickets are the baseline. Every step away from that costs fabrication hours: shaped tops, decorative collars, geometric panels, scrollwork, cable that needs tensioning, and wood or composite boards that need a frame designed around them. Ornament is almost pure labour, which is why it is the easiest place to adjust a quote that has come in above where you wanted it.

4. Finish

This is the factor people most often forget, and it can be a large fraction of the total on a big piece. Bare or primed steel is cheapest and shortest-lived. Paint costs a little and needs attention soonest. Powder coat costs more and lasts far longer. Hot-dip galvanizing is the most durable on exterior work and is usually the best value over the life of a fence, but it changes the look and has to be planned for. See materials and finishes for the honest comparison.

5. Site access and substrate

What we can get to the job, and what we can fix into when we are there. A gate we can drive to and a gate that has to be carried through a house are different jobs. Core-drilling concrete, digging footings in clay, finding out there is no framing behind the stucco where a bracket needs to land, or working around live services all add real time.

6. Automation, hardware and electrics

An automated gate is the gate plus an operator plus safety devices plus power to the post. Access control — keypad, intercom, electric strike — adds hardware and conduit. All of it is much cheaper designed in from the start than retrofitted onto finished work.

7. Permits and approvals

Some jobs need one, some do not, and it depends on your city rather than on us. Where a permit is required, that is time and fees on top of fabrication. We will flag a job that looks like one that needs a look from your building department, but they have the final say.

How an estimate actually happens

Text or call with a photo. Most jobs get a real range on the phone within a day. Anything structural, sloped, elevated or attached to something we cannot see gets a site visit — free, no obligation — and a firm number after that.

You get scope and price before anything is scheduled. Not a deposit request, not a contract to sign, not a “from” figure. A number, and what it covers.

See the full process →

What we will not do on price

We will not publish a “starting at” figure, because the only honest way to read one is as the cheapest job we have ever done, which tells you nothing about yours. We will not quote a structural job off a photograph alone. And we will not give you a number over the phone that we already know we are going to revise upward once we see the site — if the range is wide, we will tell you it is wide and why.