I use my Angie’s List membership to find great service companies. That’s a no-brainer. I also use it to see how much my home-improvement dreams will cost.
For example, we need a fence to keep our puppy Boo Radley in and nosy neighbors out. Approximate cost? If we go with chainlink (which we won’t), it could start around $1,000. Fancy ornamental steel fencing? Roughly, a whopping $5,000. (Not going with that either.) A wooden privacy fence can cost around $2,400. (That’s more like it.)
Those are figures from one local company on the List who built fences for members. I can learn if X-Y Fencers* (*fictitious name) are punctual, responsive and fairly priced, according to homeowners who hired them. I can also get an idea of what others paid for the services they received, which lets me know what I’m in for to make that fence I dream about a reality.
Granted, these are vague figures because the size of the job at my house will definitely differ from the reports I’ve scanned. But, at least I have an idea. Actually, I’ve got lots of ideas. There’s the idea of a new driveway … an improved shed … removing dead trees …
Unfortunately, I’ve found that even a DIY fence job still costs a decent amount of money.
We have a ~4-foot-high picket fence on the front edge of our backyard, next to our house, and our dog Diva keeps leaping over the fence. (At 8 years old, she’s no spring chicken - though apparently she does have springs for legs.)
So I bought 78 taller pickets to fill in the spaces between the old fence’s pickets. This cost me roughly $150. But when I got home and showed my wife what I planned to do with all the pickets, we realized the tall pickets mixed with the short ones would look horrible. Now we have to figure something else out.
We can’t afford to get a new, taller fence, but whatever we do will cost us a few hundred dollars and plenty of time if we do it ourselves. So until Diva becomes arthritic and can’t jump, or we can afford a brand-new fence, Diva’s only going out in the yard on her leash, with me as an anchor. No more olympic-style hurdling for her!
True, a good fence is never cheap, but getting good workers to put in a great fence for the best possible price is fairly easy, thanks to Angie’s list!