Custom Building Plans

• Building a deck or porch yourself?
• Hiring a contractor to do it instead?
• Perhaps you want us to build it?
• Need a set of Custom Building Plans?

We can help with one of our two quality decking services, either of which will cost a fraction of what a local architect will charge. Our Custom Building Plans will also be better because this is our specialty.

We offer two different custom design services to help you come up with the right design and a clear set of comprehensive and code–compliant Custom Building Plans for your deck, porch, sun room, or gazebo:

Design-at-a-Distance Service

Virginia Decking will work closely with you via phone, text, and email to:

• Provide a custom Preliminary Plan tailored to fit your house, your terrain, your lifestyle, and your budget. When this Preliminary Plan is exactly right, we will ...
• Submit a bid to you to build your project. This bid will include the cost of labor, cost of estimated materials (which typically saves 25% off retail), and the so-called “turnkey” price, which is labor, materials, overhead and markup if WE act as the General Contractor.  This is also called "retail".
• Optional:  For an additional fee, we can commission my Drafting Department to generate a detailed set of Building Plans which will be used to obtain a Building Permit.  These plans will also be used by your Builder to generate his material list and to build from.

Ready to begin? We just need four things to start!

“Design-at-a-Distance” Design Fee Retainers*

On-Site Design Service

For the homeowner (or builder) who wants to use our On Site Design Service, our professional deck designer will make an appointment to personally visit your home where he will:

• Take a photograph of the back of your home.
• Make a careful sketch on 11×17 grid paper of the area in question, using measurements to draw your house windows, doors, heat pump, trees, and more to scale.
• Provide you with hundreds of color photographs of work that we have done for folks all throughout Virginia and Maryland.
• Work with you, incorporating his expertise and your ideas, always mindful to stay under the budget you give him, drawing (and erasing), until you both have developed the custom deck or porch of your dreams, for the price you want to pay!
• Provide a bid to you with the price of labor, estimated cost of materials, and the so-called “turnkey” price, which is labor, materials, overhead and markup if WE act as the General Contractor.

If you decide to contract with us while we are in your home, we skip the on site design fee retainer (see below) and go straight to a contract. If you want to think about it, we collect our fee (see below), which pays for our time, travel, and expertise. This fee is credited toward your contract if and when you decide to contract with us at a later time (be aware that prices are subject to change without notice). Also, please see below for the **Non-Performance Surcharge if you want building plans but are not contracting with us for your deck installation.

“On-Site” Design Fee Retainers*

*This Design Fee retainer is simply deducted from

your initial payment when you contract with us.

**Non-Performance Surcharge: In the event you want to build the project yourself or perhaps contract with another builder, please add $500 to the above prices to order the Building Plans. Thank you in advance for your understanding.