Luna Construction & Services — Fences in Bloomington, Indiana

What a fence actually costs

Most contractors make you sit through a visit before they'll say a number. Here are mine. Installed, materials and labor together, sales tax not included. A long straight run lands at the low end; a chopped-up yard with corners and gates lands at the high end.

Style	Per foot	Typical 150 ft yard

What moves your number: tearing out an old fence, rock or tree roots in the post line, a slope that has to be stepped, and gates — a walk gate runs about in labor, a double gate about . If your yard has any of that, I'll say so while I'm standing in it, not after.

Priced against Bloomington lumber as of . Lumber and steel move month to month, and I'd rather post a number that's a little stale than no number at all. Call and I'll give you today's.

Ways to close in a yard

They do different jobs and they age differently. Pick once. Every photo below is a fence I built.

Six foot dog-ear privacy fence with a double gate

Wood privacy

Dog-ear pickets butted edge to edge so nothing sees through. The clipped top corner sheds water off the end grain, which is where a picket usually starts to rot. The most fence you get for the money.

Treated pine 15–20 years · cedar 20–30

Shadowbox

Pickets alternate front and back of the rails. Straight on it reads as a solid wall; walking past you catch slivers of the other side. Looks finished from both directions, so there's no good-side argument with the neighbor, and wind passes through instead of pushing on it.

Best on a shared line or an open, windy lot

Gothic picket

Spaced pickets with a pointed top — the shape has a name, gothic, and it's the fence most people are picturing when they say picket fence. Open enough that it marks the line without walling anything off, and it's the one wood style that looks right in a front yard rather than apologising for being there.

Front yards, gardens, dogs that don't jump

Picket fence stepping between two heights in a staggered run

Picket height transition

Less a style than a detail worth asking for. When a run has to change height — Bloomington caps a front-yard fence at four feet, so a fence coming around the house has to get from four to six somewhere — the pickets can step through the change in a staggered run instead of stopping dead and starting again taller.

It's more cutting and more layout, so it costs a little more. It's also the difference between a fence that looks designed and one that looks like two fences that happened to meet.

Where the height has to change

Horizontal board

Boards run side to side instead of up and down. It's the look people come asking for by name. Costs more because it takes longer, not because the lumber costs more — every board has to be dead level or the whole run shows it.

Wants straight, level ground

Hog wire panel

Heavy galvanized wire panels set inside a wood frame. Contains a dog and a kid without walling off the yard, so it suits a lot with something worth looking at. Add an arbor over the gate and it stops being a fence.

Keeps the view. Not private

Galvanized chain-link fence enclosing a back yard, with a wood privacy fence along the far line

Chain-link, galvanized

The cheapest way to enclose a yard, and it will outlast every wood fence on this page. Nothing to stain, nothing to warp, nothing to swap out in year fifteen. It looks like what it is, and for a back yard with a dog in it that's usually the point.

Cheapest and longest lasting. No privacy

Black vinyl coated chain-link fence and gate across a front yard

Chain-link, black vinyl

The same fence with a black coating bonded over the steel, and it's a bigger difference than the price suggests. Silver mesh reads as a wall; black mesh reads as a line, and it drops away against a tree line or a dark house in a way people don't believe until they see it. It's the only chain-link I'd put across a front yard on purpose.

A few dollars a foot more. Worth seeing in person

Gates are where fences fail

Everybody prices the fence. The gate is the part you put your hand on every day, and it's the first thing that goes wrong on a cheap job. Mine are built to outlast the fence they hang on.

Double gate built on a welded black steel frame with a cable and turnbuckle brace, clad in matching pickets

A steel frame, not a wooden box. A gate built as a wood frame racks out of square within a season or two — that's the sagging gate you've seen dragging in somebody's yard. I build on a welded steel frame and clad it in the same pickets as the fence, so it matches the run and stays square.
A cable across the diagonal. There's a turnbuckle on it. If the gate ever starts to drop, you tighten it by hand in about a minute. No tools, no phone call to me, no waiting.
The heaviest posts on the job. A gate post carries a load no other post on the fence does. It goes deeper, with more concrete, and it's the post I spend the most time getting plumb.
Sized for what actually goes through it. Measure the mower, the wheelbarrow, the trailer — not the gap. A 36 inch gate looks fine until the day you try to get a mower through it.

Ask me about a double gate anywhere you might ever need a truck in

Gate labor is priced separately from the per-foot number above, because a gate is a day's difference depending on the size and where it lands. I'll tell you the gate cost while I'm standing in the yard, not after.

How I build a gate

How it goes

I won't put a finish date on your fence before I've seen your yard. One person digs every hole, and rock, roots and rain all get a vote. What I will do is give you a real window once I've walked the line, and tell you the same day if something moves it.

You call and we talk Roughly how much fence, what it's for, what you're working with. I can usually give you a ballpark on the phone.
I come measure Free, and I'll walk the line with you. This is where we find the tree roots and the spot where the ground drops away.
You get a written price Itemized, so you can see what's material and what's labor. It doesn't change unless you change the fence.
I build it Posts and concrete first, then the concrete gets a day or two to set, then the fence goes on. Scraps and old fence leave with me.

Why I come in under the big companies: there's no crew to make payroll for, no foreman riding around checking on them, no office taking a cut of your job. It's me and a truck. That's most of the difference in the number, and it's also why I won't promise you a Friday.

Before you call anybody

Worth doing whether you hire me or not. It'll save you money and possibly a lawsuit.

Find your property line. Actually find it.: Not the mowing line, not where the old fence was. Fences built on the wrong side of a line get torn out at the builder's expense, and neighbors who were friendly in April are not friendly in July. If there's any doubt, a survey is cheaper than a rebuild.
Call 811 before anyone digs. It's free.: Indiana 811 marks your gas, electric and cable lines at no charge, and state law requires it. Give them a couple of working days. Putting a post hole through a gas line is a very bad afternoon.
Check your HOA before you fall in love with a style.: Plenty of Bloomington neighborhoods restrict height, material, or which way the finished side faces. Ten minutes reading the covenants beats tearing out a finished fence.
Talk to your neighbor first.: Especially on a shared line. Sometimes they'll split the cost. Even when they won't, a fence is a lot easier to live next to when nobody was surprised by it.

Got more questions than that? I wrote out plain answers to the fifty or so things people actually ask me — cedar against treated, how deep the posts go, what stain to buy, what the Bloomington height rules are, and what it all costs.

Read the answers

Fences, built by the same person who quotes them.