Carpentry questions

Six to ten weeks of shop fabrication after you sign off the design, then two to five days on site to fit. From first visit to finished cabinetry is three to four months. There is no version of this where cabinetry appears in three weeks: the timber has to be selected and milled, carcasses and doors built, and the finish sprayed and properly cured before anything leaves the shop. If your date is genuinely immovable, stock or semi-custom cabinetry through a kitchen remodel is the faster route and we will say so.

Timber species first, then whether the doors are inset or overlay. Painted poplar is the value option and a genuinely good one, because paint does not care what is underneath as long as it is stable; white oak and walnut are several times the cost. Inset doors sit flush within the frame, which looks considerably better and demands tolerances measured in fractions of a millimetre across a run that will move seasonally, so it costs more than overlay.

No. Where the carcasses are sound, refacing can be good value, but it runs on a different supply chain from the one we work in and we would be the wrong company to do it. We build new cabinetry in our shop and fit it, or we fit stock and semi-custom units as part of a kitchen remodel.

Almost always because the material was cut and fitted straight off the van rather than acclimatised first. Trim arrives at whatever moisture content the warehouse had, and your house is drier in January and more humid in August, so timber shrinks as it equalises. We deliver material several days before we cut it and let it sit in the room it is going into. It costs nothing except a corner of a dry room and it is the difference between joints that stay closed and joints you notice every time you walk past.

A coped inside corner has one piece run into the corner and the other cut to its profile with a coping saw, so the joint closes rather than opening as the timber moves. A mitred inside corner looks identical on the day and opens up by the following summer. Mitring is faster, which is why plenty of installers do it. We cope every inside corner on crown, and price tracks corner count far more closely than it tracks linear feet.

Usually yes, either with a stock profile close enough or by having knives ground to run the original. The second costs more and is often worth it in a house with any architectural character. Bring us a short offcut of the original if you have one anywhere; a piece from the back of a cupboard is enough to copy from, and it is far more useful than a photograph.

No. That is timber doing exactly what it should in North Carolina humidity, and planing it in summer gives you a door with a visible gap by winter. The usual real fixes are a longer hinge screw driven into the stud rather than just the jamb, a strike plate moved a few millimetres, or a hinge shimmed. That is a short visit and it is much cheaper than a replacement, and we will always try it first.

An insert if the existing frame and sill are sound, full-frame if they are not. An insert fits inside the existing frame: quicker, cheaper, less disruptive, keeps your trim inside and out, and loses a little glass area. A full-frame replacement takes everything back to the rough opening, costs more and means new trim, and it is the only way to get the flashing detail properly right. If the sill is soft, an insert is a way of hiding a problem rather than fixing one.

It is genuinely a gamble, and worth knowing before you commit. In many Triangle houses, particularly builder-grade ones from the 1980s onward, the treads under carpet were never intended to be seen: construction-grade softwood, often with a plywood riser, held down with staples and adhesive, and gouged. Sometimes what comes up is beautiful and needs sanding and finishing; often it needs new treads. We survey first and price both outcomes separately so you can decide with the information.

Usually smaller than it feels, and the cause is nearly always the newel post rather than the balusters. A newel fixed only to the tread has nothing to resist a sideways push, and once it moves the whole run feels unsafe. Fixing it properly means anchoring into the framing, which sometimes means opening the skirt board or working from below. That fixing is what our five year joinery warranty is really about, because a balustrade that feels solid on handover and loose in two years was fixed to the wrong thing.

Three options, and choosing between them is most of the skill. A splice cuts the rotten section back to sound timber and scarfs a new piece in, which is cheaper than replacement and keeps the original profile. Epoxy consolidation hardens softened fibre and is right for something irreplaceable like an original turned column, and wrong for a length of stock casing. Full replacement is right when more than about a third has gone or the piece carries load.

It will if the water is still getting in, which is why our quote names the cause rather than just the repair. Timber does not rot on its own: something is keeping it wet, usually a gutter overflowing or discharging behind a fascia, a roof detail with no flashing, a sill with no drip edge, or a paint film that failed years ago. Where the cause is ours to fix we quote it alongside. Our two year warranty assumes the water has been dealt with, and we will not warrant a splice under a still-leaking gutter.