How It Works
From the first phone call to the final walkthrough — the real sequence, the real timelines, and which parts are ours to carry.
The short version
You call and a person answers. We come out, measure the space properly, and send a written quote promptly after the visit. When you approve it, the project goes to engineering, then to your county for a permit, then to install. How long that middle stretch runs is your county's call rather than ours, and install starts once the permit is in hand.
The longer version is below, because the honest answer to “how long will this take” depends almost entirely on which county you live in — and one of them is genuinely unpredictable. We would rather you read that here than have you hear it for the first time once the project is already underway.
Nothing on this page is a sales timeline. It is what the sequence actually looks like, including the parts that are slow and the parts that are outside anybody's control.
Nine steps, in the order they happen
The same sequence on every project, whether it is a driveway, a pool deck or a whole backyard. The early steps are the ones we control and move on quickly. After that, the county sets the pace.
You call, a person answers
Weekdays 9 to 5, someone in our office picks up the phone. We get back to emails quickly. Your project goes into our system on that first call, so the details live somewhere other than one person's memory.
We book the estimate
You get scheduled with a salesperson at a time that suits you. The estimate is free, and it happens at your property — we do not quote a backyard we have not stood in.
The visit
We measure, read the grade and the drainage, look at what is under any existing surface, and bring material options along so you can hold them up against your house rather than against a screen.
Your quote, in writing
The written quote reaches you promptly after that visit with the scope spelled out, before you commit to anything.
You approve, engineering starts
Engineering comes first. Getting the engineering right is what stops the county sending the whole package back, which is the slowest possible way to reach a permit.
Permit submission
We submit to your jurisdiction and we track it. Review time depends entirely on which county you are in — the table below is the honest version, wild card included.
HOA package, if you have one
We prepare the drawings, specs and product details your board needs. You submit it yourself, because HOAs deal with the homeowner rather than the contractor.
Install
Install follows once the permit is in hand. The project is managed by us from end to end — one schedule, one point of contact, one company accountable for it.
Walkthrough and sign-off
We walk the finished work with you before anyone calls it done. If something is not right, that is the moment to say so, and it gets put right.
Permits, county by county
This is the part most contractors keep vague. Permit review is the county's clock, not ours, and it varies more than anything else in the project. Here is how the counties we work in actually compare.
St. Johns County, Clay County and Jacksonville Beach tend to move at a steady pace. Those are the jurisdictions where a date we give you is most likely to hold. Nassau County, including Fernandina Beach, usually runs a little longer than that.
Engineering happens before any of that, and it runs before anything reaches the county at all. Install then begins once the permit is in hand.
Duval is the one we will not dress up. We have seen it come back quickly and we have seen it take a long time, with no reliable way to tell in advance which one you are getting. If your project is in Duval, plan for that rather than for the best case.
Palm Coast sits in Flagler County, which is the southern edge of where we work. We have done little enough there to have no review time worth publishing, so we will not invent one — we will tell you what we know and what we do not.
Why we come out in person
Every estimate happens at your property. We tried quoting remotely and it did not stick — not because it was inconvenient, but because the numbers it produced were not good enough to stand behind.
Grade, drainage and whatever is buried under the existing surface decide a large part of what a hardscape project costs, and none of the three are visible from an aerial photograph. Neither is the thing you actually want, which usually takes a conversation in the space rather than a form. Material is the same story: concrete pavers, travertine and marble all read differently against a particular house, in Florida sun, underfoot. We bring options with us so you can look at them where they are going to live.
What you get out of the hour is a written quote, promptly, with the scope spelled out, and a number that was arrived at honestly rather than one that quietly grows once work starts.
HOA approval, in plain terms
If you are in an HOA community, your board has to approve the work, and that runs on a separate track from the county. We prepare the whole submission — drawings, specifications and product details — and hand you the finished package to sign and send.
The application itself goes in under your name, because HOAs deal with the homeowner and not the contractor. After that it comes down to the board's meeting calendar, which is luck of the draw: you either catch the next meeting or you have just missed one. That calendar is theirs rather than ours, and we build it into the conversation early rather than discovering it late.
What we need from you
Not much, and all of it early. Access to the space for the estimate, and ideally ten minutes of your time while we are there — decisions made standing in the yard are better decisions than ones made over email a week later.
After that: your approval on the quote, your HOA application submitted once we hand you the package, and a heads-up about anything on the property we would not see for ourselves. Irrigation lines, a gate code, a dog who considers the backyard hers. Small things, but they are the ones that hold a crew up when nobody mentions them.
The parts of this we will not bend on
On the process side, what we stand for mostly means saying the unglamorous thing early. You will hear your county's real permit outlook before you sign, even when the real answer is that Duval could take a long time. You will get the scope in writing with your quote, so you can read it rather than take a salesperson's word for it on the day.
There is no countdown on this website, no invented deadline and no price marked up so a discount can be stuck on the front of it. Military and first responder discounts available.
St. Johns Outdoors has been a family business since 2021 — an owner who grew up on his father's job sites and whose sons work in the business now. We work roughly an hour around Jacksonville and St. Johns County: north to Fernandina Beach, south to Palm Coast, and west through Orange Park, Fleming Island, Green Cove Springs and Middleburg.
FAQ
Process questions.
Call us — a real person answers weekdays 9–5, and every inquiry gets a same-day response during business hours.
Call (904) 925-3089That depends almost entirely on your county, which is the part nobody in this trade controls. The sequence is fixed: engineering runs first, then your county reviews the permit. What moves is the county. St. Johns, Clay and Jacksonville Beach tend to move at a steady pace, Nassau usually runs a little longer, and Duval is genuinely unpredictable — sometimes quick, sometimes a long wait. We tell you which one you are in before you sign, not after.
A person here answers and takes the real details — where you are, what you want built, and what is already in the space. It goes into our system on that call, and then we book you with a salesperson for the on-site visit. You are not filling in a form that disappears, and you are not being screened by a call centre before a human hears about your project.
No, and that is a deliberate choice. We tried remote quoting and it did not hold up: you cannot read grade, drainage or what is under an existing surface from a satellite photo, and a number produced that way tends to change once someone finally walks the site. An in-person estimate costs you an hour and gets you a figure that means something.
Book a free estimateWe do. Engineering, drawings and the permit submission are our job, and the review time is already built into the schedule we give you. You are not chasing a permit clerk. Your HOA is the one piece that has to go in under your name, because boards deal with the homeowner rather than the contractor — we prepare that package for you.
Then you hear it from us. Permit review is the county's clock and nobody can speed it up, so the only honest thing a contractor can do is set the expectation truthfully at the start and tell you when something slips. That is exactly why Duval is described on this page as a wild card rather than given a tidy number it does not deserve.
Yes — military and first responder discounts available.
Start with a conversation
Get Your Free Estimate
Tell us about your project and we'll book the on-site visit. Your written quote follows promptly after it.