Not certain I follow your question. Are you asking about the comparison of pre-made fencing sections and cost of materials to build from scratch?

I suspect from scratch materials from a local lumber yard would be equal or more than the pre-made sections from a big box store. Keep in mind that the pre-made sections will most likely be made of secondary quality wood.

A fence is about the easiest thing a DIY'er can build. Yes, cedar is an oft preferred wood as it holds up to weather well. Pressure treated warps and splits. Vinyl, to me, just doesn't look right.

Personally I set my posts with pea gravel, not concrete and I pre-stain all the fencing parts before the build.

Hope this helps.

You would be wise to research your area by seeing how reputable fence builders in your area set their posts. If you are in a freeze area, in most cases, you are going to want to dig your holes down past the frost lines even though in some freeze zones it's not necessary. It is dependent on soils types/conditions. You almost always want to lay a bed of gravel at the bottom of the hole and up a little of the sides of the post if you are going to set them in concrete. I've had good luck with applying asphalt emulsion to the sides of the post that are buried but not the very bottom of the post to allow drainage from moisture build up in the post as it runs down the insides.

just some info from the contractor who recently built my fence. He used fir rather than cedar because he says it does just as good a job, weathers nicely, and lasts as long as cedar - for about half the price. (other climates may be different - I live in a dry, hot area)

Joe,

I'm late to this party, but when I was ready for a pool fence it was cost-prohibitive for me to hire any part of it out. I wanted 440' of 2" square picket cedar fence, 6' tall.

I'm in CT, I found a sawmill up in Canada. Ordered rough-cut materials from them. True 2x6 bottom rails, 2x5 top rails, 5" square posts, and 2" square pickets.

I spent a good amount of time on the table saw and my kids spent a few hours on the planer. Some router work on the rails too. But the materials were a fraction of what they would have cost me locally just for the materials, shipping included.

"I spent a good amount of time on the table saw and my kids spent a few hours on the planer. Some router work on the rails too".

I'm about to start a project for some folks on an all redwood fence project using rough sawn materials where i will bevel all the rails/fence boards and lattice frames because the owner wants the extra detail. It makes a difference to spend a little router time. I'm making the lattice panel dado'ing the frames for tha lattice along with making up some stop trim as extra support for the lattice. The pre-made panels that you get at the big box stores are junk and a little tall for this project. In the long run though, most folks just want a fence without the finer details. Different strokes for different folks!

Agree, the extra work doesn't bother me at all.

In my case, each picket went through the table saw at least 4 passes to true up the sides. Some took six.

Each picket has a pyramid cut on the top and a truncated pyramid cut on the bottom. Four cuts on the top and five on the bottom.

The rails, I beveled the top edges a few degrees to help shed water, then routed a 1/2" bead on the top and bottom edges.

Here are my kids having at it:

Awesome family project! From past posts of your projects through the years, you guys don't do anything second rate, always first class. Have fun with your fence project!

Thank you. Sorry I was slow to get respond.

Have any pics of the finished product? Your project is about 2 x what I have in mind. What type of stock did you order?

Can you give me the name of the canadian supplier? Do they have a Website. What type of shipping did they use, I live on long island.

Thanks so much

Joe

Sierraeast, thanks for the kind words. Yup, I pretty much try to do things once. One and done.

nnlogistics,

My apologies back at you for this tardy reply.

The lumber is all cedar, northern white cedar. I had no plans to coat this fence with paint or stain or preservative, my goal was to let it silver on its own, to weather naturally. No maintenance.

The sawmill outfit was...Loyalist Forrest. Ooh. Their website used to be bare bones, no pretty pictures or graphics, just a lumber calculator for the varying sizes that they milled with board-foot pricing, and info on tarriffs and shipping. It's all purdy now. I hope that doesn't mean there prices are all purdy too.

I don't have many photos specifically showing the fence. Some as background. Here are a few:

In the above photo you can see the electrical conduit (gray PVC) for the post lights snugged up under the top rail. It blends quite well. There's an elevation difference between the grass yard outside the fence and the raised planting bed inside the fence. It sort of looks like the bottom rail and the fence picket bottoms are touching earth, but there's a 2-by 12 gravel board that contains the soil in the raised bed and isolates the soil from the fence posts and bottom rails of the fence.

In the above photo, the posts are 5" square cedar but the pergola superstructure is all stock 2-by doug fir.

Found one more from the outside, I did the fence one year then did the pergola the next year: