Yard & Beam answers one question that comes up in almost every home project: how much do I actually need to buy? How many bags of concrete for the shed pad, how many tons of gravel for the path, how many gallons for the bedroom, how many boards for the deck.
Get it wrong one way and you make a second trip to the store halfway through a pour. Get it wrong the other way and you pay for pallets of material that sit behind the garage for years. Our calculators and guides are built to get you close the first time, and to show you the math so you can check it yourself.
Who runs the site
Yard & Beam is an independent site run by Jorge Trigo from Getxo, Spain. Jorge is a business management student at the Universitat Politècnica de València and runs a small group of reference websites for US readers.
To be clear about what that means: Jorge is not a contractor, engineer or licensed tradesperson, and the site does not pretend otherwise. Its value is in careful, transparent estimating: every calculator uses plain geometry, and every product figure (a bag’s yield, a gallon’s coverage, a manufacturer’s spacing rule) comes from the manufacturer, a building-science agency such as ENERGY STAR, or a university extension service, and is linked at the end of each article.
What you will find here
- Calculators for concrete, gravel, mulch, soil, pavers, sod, seed, paint, drywall, wallpaper, tile, grout, flooring, carpet, deck boards, fences, shingles and insulation. They run in your browser and don’t collect anything you type.
- Guides that explain how to measure, the formula behind each estimate, a worked example, typical sizes in a chart, and the mistakes that leave people short.
- Honest limits. When a job involves structural loads, permits, frost depth, utilities or safety equipment, we say so and point you to your local building department or a licensed professional.
How the site is funded
The site is free to use. It may show advertising served by Google AdSense; ads never influence what we write or which products we mention. We don’t accept payment for coverage. If that ever changes (for example, affiliate links), it will be disclosed clearly on the page.
Get in touch
Spotted a number that looks wrong, or a project you would like a calculator for? Corrections are the most useful message you can send us. See the contact page, and read how we research and check our numbers.