DIY Assistance & stuff
I'm not imagining a real need for this service. So this might be the page that has the least words on it!
Companies and Organizations will pay architects and engineers to design commercial buildings. Sometimes a person with a lot of money will pay an architect to design them a home.
But most people don't think they should pay for anything to be designed for them. Especially with the internet, people will search endlessly for some free design or for some free software/app that will let them design their own thing. They do this with websites, business cards, logos, everything. They don't think they should pay for a deck design either.
Because most people think "It's just a deck."
Most people won't form and pour their own driveway or build their own in-ground swimming pool - even though technically they probably could.
But since they can walk into any big box store and see racks of lumber, aisles full of every tool and screw, and shelves full of How-to books (not to mention all they can find on the internet about decks) they think they can just strike out and build their own deck! They think they can do it because it appears that they can get to everything they need, via retail, without a license or special connections.
And, technically, they could.
And many have.
Some were more successful than others.
And the latter usually call us and ask us to take over. The reason they give up? Because they realize there is more to it than they thought. They realize that the lumber at those stores can be junk and you have to know what you're looking at. They learn that some tools are just crap. They discover that the How-to books and most of what they can find on the internet is written by idiots and is just plain wrong.
Not to mention all the tricks of the trade and order-of-operations that could save them from endless headaches. Those books appear to give you a step-by-step guide to deck building, but most of them will just lead you to waste you time & money and leave you frustrated.
But still...... People would rather pay someone to do it all for them than to pay for designs and instructions. And that's ok. That's what we're mainly here for anyway - to design AND build it for you.
But if you are someone who really wants to have a deck that is designed and built right but wants to do it yourself. Or you need to get started before we could get to it on our schedule. Then maybe you'd appreciate what you'd get from us if you just pay us to design it and plan out the construction steps in writing for you.
So far in the history of this company only two people have ever asked about our Design Only services. And before I could even get them a quote on it, they declined as soon as they realized it wasn't free.
Isn't that weird?
People want me to spend tens of hours on something for free.
Hmmm.
Maybe they were wishing I was not human, with a family and limited time on this earth. Maybe they will finally feel satisfied now that AI has been unleashed and they can get it to design them a deck - for free.
I just hope they realize that AI still gives humans 7 or 8 fingers on each hand when you ask it to draw a person and that when something stumps it it just makes something up.
Anyway, odds are you won't need/want these services. Odds are no one will ever take me up on it. And that's fine. So I'm not going to waste a bunch of time coming up with things to put here called "How our Design Only services work" or laying out the different levels of help we could give you or the pricing for each level.
To get an idea of cost though, you could Google how much architects make an hour, reduce it by a little, then figure that it could be 5-20 hours worth of initial stuff. Then figure you might want me to make a site visit or two, or you may want to be able to email me or call me (facetime, maybe) a few times during construction when you run into questions.
And after figuring a ballpark you could live with, if you DO want to talk to me about seriously doing this for you, just email me and we'll go from there. Happy to help if we can.
Thanks.
