Trim and Finish Carpentry in Durham, NC

Durham is about 30 minutes from our base, which usually means an estimate this week rather than next month. We cover Trinity Park, Watts Hillandale, Old West Durham and the rest of town.

Crown molding, wainscoting, coffered ceilings, built-ins and stair details, scribed to the walls you actually have rather than the ones on a plan. Older Durham neighborhoods sit inside local historic districts, which adds a design review step to exterior work that most Wake County towns do not have.

What the price covers

• Base, casing and crown installation. Inside corners coped rather than mitered, casing and base scribed to the actual wall, and outside corners mitered tight with a nailing schedule that keeps them that way.
• Built ins and cabinetry. Face frames and side panels scribed on site to a wall and floor that are rarely level or plumb, so the finished piece reads as part of the room instead of a box set down inside it.
• Stair parts. Skirt boards, treads, risers and handrail fit to the actual stair opening, with consistent rise and run carried through from the top of the flight to the bottom.

Trim and Finish Carpentry in Durham, in practice

Almost no wall in a Durham house built before the 2000s is actually straight, and finish carpentry lives or dies on how the trim handles that fact. At inside corners we cope one piece of baseboard or crown to fit over the profile of the other rather than cutting two forty five degree miters, because a coped joint stays tight even as the two walls move independently through a Durham County summer and winter. Where casing meets a wall that bows or leans, we scribe the edge to follow the actual surface instead of trusting a factory straight edge. The extra time at the saw is what keeps a hallway of trim reading as one continuous line instead of a series of small visible steps.

Wood trim in a Durham home moves with the seasons, expanding somewhat in the humidity of a Carolina summer and contracting in a dry heated winter, and a good installation plans for that instead of fighting it. Paint grade material, usually finger jointed pine or MDF, is stable, inexpensive and disappears completely under two coats of paint, which makes it the right call for most baseboard, casing and crown. Stain grade material, solid poplar, oak or a hardwood matched to existing floors, shows every joint and grain line, so it costs more in both material and labor and demands tighter joinery. We leave a hairline gap at long butt joints in Durham County projects either way, because solid wood caulked bone tight in January can buckle by August.

Questions from Durham homeowners