Backyard Designs on a Budget:
A Real Houston Range
Answer four short questions and you will have a planning range for your project — before you give us anything. It is the same reasoning we use when we walk a property: what is being built, how big it is, how it is finished, and what the site makes us do to get there.
A planning range, not a quote
Built from typical rates for work of this type and size, and widened wherever you tell us something is unknown. Your real number comes from a walked property and a finished design — that is the first point the quantities and the materials are actually known.
Why two identical yards price differently.
Square footage
The single largest lever. Doubling a patio does not quite double its cost — mobilisation is fixed — but it comes close.
Materials and finish
The same patio in broom-finish concrete and in cut stone are different projects. This is where the level of finish you choose lands.
Grading and drainage
Water has to go somewhere. A site that already drains costs less than one that needs to be re-graded, and far less than one that needs a system.
Equipment access
A wide gate a machine can drive through, or a narrow one where everything moves by wheelbarrow. It changes labour more than homeowners expect.
Demolition
Removing an old slab, a deck, or a pool is its own scope before the new work starts.
Sequencing
Several scopes built together share mobilisation and cost less than the same scopes built one at a time, a year apart.
Once you know roughly where your project sits, the design packages are the next thing worth reading — construction is priced from the finished design, so that is where a range becomes a number.
About this estimate.
- 01
How accurate is the estimate?
It is a planning range, not a quote. It is built from typical rates for work of this type and size, then widened where you told us something is unknown. Construction is quoted from a finished design, because that is the first point at which real quantities and real materials are known.
- 02
Why is it a range instead of one number?
Because two properties with identical square footage can differ by a third once grading, access, and material selections are known. A single number would be more satisfying and less honest. The range narrows as you answer more, and narrows again after a site visit.
- 03
Do I have to give my details to see the estimate?
No. The range appears as soon as you have made your selections and updates as you change them. We ask for an email afterwards only if you would like a copy of it.
- 04
Does the design fee come off the construction cost?
Dream Design is offered at a reduced rate specifically for homeowners who intend to build with us. Design fees appear as their own line in the breakdown because they are published prices, not estimates.
- 05
What if my project is bigger than the calculator handles?
Then it tells you so instead of guessing. A whole-property build is sequenced and priced as one project rather than as separate scopes added together, and at that scale the details are what move the number.
Turn the range into a number.
Walk the property with Texan Landscape Group and we will replace the estimate with a proposal built on real measurements and real materials.
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