EstimatorKitLinear feet, then the sticks that actually come home
Linear feet count length only — a run of 8 ft is eight of them whether the piece is a 1 by 2 or a 2 by 12. Add your runs in feet and inches, take a perimeter off a rectangle, or divide a coverage area by the width a board really covers, and this hands back the total plus the part that decides the order: how many 8 to 24 ft sticks that becomes, how much is left over, and the larger count for runs that must arrive in one piece.
- Three ways in
- 8 to 24 ft stock
- Offcut named
Wall by wall, rail by rail — the way a take-off is actually written.
Name each one the way you would call it out on site. The names come back in the copied list, and a counter hand reads “end walls” faster than “Run 2”.
Base, casing, crown, decking, handrail and gutter come off this rack — 8 ft to 16 ft.
Add the price your yard quoted per foot
Yours, not ours — the point of typing it here is to see the gap between the feet you use and the feet you pay for.
Length to cover, before anything is bought
46.2 linear ft
- On a tape
- 46' 2"
- With 10% for cuts
- 50.8 ft
Cut anywhere: 4 sticks of 16 ft
That buys 64 ft to place 50.8, so 13.2 ft goes home in the truck. Switching to 14 ft sticks cuts the leftover to 5.22 ft across 4 pieces.
A stick for every run: 6 sticks
That is 2 more than the split above, because a run cannot be assembled from two shorter pieces without a visible joint. It buys 64 ft and leaves 17.8 ft.
- Long wall at 16' 4"1 × 16 ft + 8 ft, 7.67 ft off each
- End walls ×2 at 11' 9"2 × 12 ft, 0.25 ft off each
- Return by the hearth ×2 at 3' 2"2 × 8 ft, 4.83 ft off each
Nothing on this rack covers 16' 4" in one piece, so those runs are shown as a full-length stick plus the shortest one that reaches the tail — cheaper than a second full stick and the same single joint. Put that joint over a stud or a post, cut both halves at 45 degrees so the overlap hides the seasonal gap, and glue it.
| Stick | Pieces | Feet bought | Left over |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 ft | 7 | 56 | 5.22 ft |
| 10 ft | 6 | 60 | 9.22 ft |
| 12 ft | 5 | 60 | 9.22 ft |
| 14 ft | 4 | 56 | 5.22 ft |
| 16 ft | 4 | 64 | 13.2 ft |
The 10% sits on top of the measured 46.2 ft rather than inside it, and the leftover in the table is a separate thing again: one is material you destroy, the other is material the rack forces you to take. Only the first is worth arguing about with a quote.
Coverage assumes every board runs full width. Where a run is fed by the offcut of the one before it — a picket fence, a run of decking with a butt joint over a joist — the true figure lands between the two counts above, and closer to the lower one the longer the runs are. A 5.75 in effective width is what puts 2.09 ft of board into every square foot of deck.
Linear feet, lineal feet and sticks
What is a linear foot, and is a lineal foot something different?
A linear foot is one foot measured along the piece, with its width and thickness left out entirely, and lineal foot is the same unit under an older spelling that invoices and lumber yards still use. Nothing is implied about the section: an 8 ft length of 1 by 2 and an 8 ft length of 2 by 12 are both eight linear feet. That is why a price per linear foot only compares two quotes when the profile is identical, and why a quote for a countertop or a cabinet run at a rate per linear foot has a fixed depth baked silently into the rate.
How do I convert square feet into linear feet?
Divide the area by the width one board actually covers, then keep the units straight: linear feet equals square feet times twelve, divided by the coverage width in inches. A nominal 6 in deck board is 5.5 in wide and is laid with about a 1/4 in gap, so it covers 5.75 in and a square foot of deck takes 2.09 ft of board. The conversion only exists because a width was supplied — there is no general formula between an area and a length, which is why a calculator that offers one without asking for a width is answering a different question.
Do deck boards really only cover 5 3/4 inches each?
Yes, and both halves of that number matter. A nominal 6 in board is dressed to 5.5 in under PS 20, whether it is 5/4 radius-edge decking, a 2 by 6 or a 1 by 6 fence board. The gap between boards adds the rest: about a quarter inch, so water and leaf litter fall through rather than sitting on the joist and rotting it. Boards installed soaking wet — most treated stock is — will shrink apart from a tight fit, so laying them touching and letting them open is a legitimate alternative to gapping them, and it changes the coverage figure to 5.5. Type whichever you plan to do.
Can baseboard be joined in the middle of a wall?
Yes, with a scarf joint over a stud, and it is standard practice on any wall longer than the rack. Cut both pieces at 45 degrees so they overlap rather than butt, put the joint on a stud so both halves are nailed, glue the faces, and orient it so the visible edge faces away from the room's main approach. The reason for the angle is seasonal: a butt joint opens into a black line every winter, while a scarf joint slides over itself and the gap stays hidden. On a run of 20 ft the choice is not really optional, since nothing on a trim rack reaches it.
What a linear foot leaves out
The unit is deliberately thin: a linear foot describes distance along a piece and nothing else, which is what makes it useful for baseboard, decking, gutter, fence rail and cable, and useless for anything whose cross-section is the point. The trap it sets is at the price list. Two suppliers quoting per linear foot are only comparable when the profile is the same, because the width and thickness live inside the rate rather than beside it — a fact the countertop and cabinet trades exploit openly, quoting per linear foot of run at an assumed depth. Where the section is the product rather than an assumption, the trade switches to a unit that carries it: hardwood is priced by volume, in board feet of 144 cubic inches each, and sheet goods by area.
Turning an area into a length needs one more number than most people expect: the width a board covers, which is not its nominal name and usually not its measured width either. A nominal 6 in deck board is 5.5 in dressed and is laid with roughly a quarter-inch gap, so it covers 5.75 in and 192 square feet of deck takes about 401 feet of board. Count it by rows instead and the figure moves — 12 feet across is 25.04 boards, so 26 rows of 16 ft is 416 feet — and the row count is the one to order against, because rows are whole and the last one is not going to be four percent of a board. That is also why the gap belongs in the input rather than in a fudge factor, and why it works the opposite way round to most allowances: butting the boards tight drops the coverage to 5.5 in and the same deck then wants 419 feet of board, eighteen more than the gapped layout.
Then comes the part almost every competitor skips. Nothing on this list is sold by the foot; it is sold in sticks of fixed length, and 47 feet of casing arrives as three 16 ft pieces with a foot on the floor. Whether that division is the right answer depends entirely on your joints — a fence rail can be butted over a post and nobody will ever look, while a scarfed handrail is the first thing a hand finds — so both counts are given here rather than one. Runs measured around a boundary usually start as an area, and the acreage that produced them is on the acre calculator. Length is also the wrong unit for anything hollow: a run of pipe is linear feet of pipe, but what fits inside it is a volume.