Carpentry & Framing in Duluth, MN & Superior, WI

Often, yes. Sistering a cracked joist, adding blocking and re-framing a sagging opening are standard carpentry for us. Duluth lists structural alterations among work that needs a permit, so we check what your address needs, and who the office requires to pull the permit, before we quote. If opening things up shows a bigger problem, such as a failing beam or foundation settlement, we'll tell you straight and help you bring in an engineer or the right contractor.

Usually. Between salvaged pieces, stock profiles and stacked molding combinations, we can get very close to the fir and oak casing, baseboard and crown in older Twin Ports homes. For painted trim, a near-match reads as identical once it's finished. Stained trim is harder, since old wood darkens with age, so we test the color on a sample before installing. Save any original pieces you've pulled off; they're the best match.

We build installed pieces rather than stand-alone furniture: built-in bookcases, window seats, mudroom benches and lockers, shelving and closet systems. If it attaches to the house, we can plan it with you, build it and scribe it tight to walls that are rarely straight in an older home. For a table, dresser or other loose piece, a furniture maker is the better call.

Before. Baseboard goes on first, set a little above the subfloor so the carpet installer can tuck the edge of the carpet under it, and it's usually painted before the carpet goes down. Hard floors reverse the order: LVP, laminate, hardwood and tile go in first, and the baseboard or shoe molding covers the gap along the wall. Replacing carpet usually doesn't mean removing baseboard that's already at the right height.

An average bedroom usually takes a few hours to a half day for new baseboard, and a whole floor takes a day or two. The cutting is quick; the time goes into removing old trim, coping each inside corner, fitting the trim to walls and floors that aren't flat, then setting nails, filling holes and caulking. Painting adds drying time, so it's often a second visit. Older Duluth and Superior homes with wavy plaster walls take longer than new drywall.

Straight runs are a fair DIY job if you have a miter saw, a finish nailer and a stud finder. The hard parts are inside corners, which stay tight only when they're coped rather than mitered, outside corners on walls that aren't square, and gaps where the floor dips or the wall bows. On old plaster walls, finding framing to nail into is its own puzzle. If a room has many corners or you want stain-grade wood, hiring it out usually saves material and frustration.

It depends mostly on the length of the run, the number of corners, the trim you choose and whether painting is included, so Twin Ports Contracting & Repair quotes it by the room as a flat written price. Removing old trim, stain-grade wood instead of paint-grade MDF or pine, and uneven floors that need scribing all add time. Send a photo of each room and a rough measurement; the handyman cost guide explains the other price factors.

Trim carpentry is the finish side of carpentry: baseboard, shoe molding, door and window casing, crown molding, chair rail, wainscoting, stair skirts and window stools. It's carpentry in every sense, just the visible layer that goes on after framing and drywall. Trim carpenters and finish carpenters overlap heavily, and a handyman crew with carpentry skills does most home trim work. A return, for example, is the small piece that turns the end of a molding back into the wall so no cut end shows.

Usually, yes. Loose baseboard gets re-nailed into framing, dents and gouges are filled and sanded, and a split or damaged section is cut out and spliced with a matching piece, then caulked and painted. Replacement makes more sense when MDF baseboard has swollen from a leak or a wet mop, since it doesn't shrink back. In older Duluth and Superior homes, a matching profile can often be salvaged from a closet or built up from stock moldings.

Use PVC or another moisture-resistant baseboard wherever a basement floor might ever see water, because PVC won't swell or rot and paints like wood. MDF is the one to avoid there, since it swells as soon as it gets wet. Keep any wood trim from resting on the concrete; Duluth's basement-finishing rules already require wood in contact with concrete to be treated or naturally decay-resistant. If the space isn't finished yet, see basement finishing.

Caulking and nail-hole filling are part of a proper paint-grade install, and our written quote says whether painting is included too. Painted trim gets a bead of caulk along the top edge and at the corners so it reads as one clean line. Stain-grade trim is different: caulk would show, so every joint has to be cut tight and the nail holes are filled with a matching colored putty. You can also have the trim left primed for your own paint.

Crown molding covers the joint where the walls meet the ceiling and gives the top of the room a finished edge. The name comes from where it sits: it crowns the wall the way a classical cornice crowns a building, and a simple cornice can be nothing more than crown molding atop an interior wall (Wikipedia: Cornice). On a building's exterior, a projecting cornice also sheds rainwater away from the walls. Indoors, its job is to hide an uneven seam and finish the room.

Keep it. Whether crown belongs is a question of the house, not the year. Crown descends from the classical cornice (Wikipedia: Cornice), and in older Duluth and Superior homes the original crown is part of the architecture, so keeping or matching it is the safe call. Newer, simpler houses often suit a small plain profile or flat crown, and a low, minimal room can skip it. Whatever you choose, keep the crown in the same style family as the casing and baseboard.

With a transition piece where the level run meets the slope. Where crown on a flat ceiling turns up a rake, the faces of the two pieces don't match at the corner. Fine Homebuilding's method rips the back of the level runs to fit the ceiling's slope, then cuts a short transition piece with a 45-degree miter at the corner and a second miter to the rake angle (Fine Homebuilding). Using two different crown sizes instead rarely lines up well.

It doesn't have to be identical everywhere, but it should look consistent. Keep one profile through open, connected spaces and hallways where you can see from room to room, so the lines agree at every doorway. A formal living or dining room can take a larger or built-up crown, and bedrooms or low-ceilinged rooms a smaller profile from the same style family. In older Twin Ports homes, match the original trim wherever it survives, since that's what the house was built around.

Semi-gloss in most rooms, so it matches the rest of the trim. Sherwin-Williams recommends semi-gloss for trim and moldings because it's easy to clean, and flat paint for ceilings (Sherwin-Williams). Crown sits between the two, so painting it the trim color in semi-gloss makes it read as trim, while painting it the ceiling color in flat lets it blend upward on a low ceiling. On wavy plaster ceilings, flat also helps, since it hides surface flaws better than a shinier finish.

Yes, if the rot is small and shallow and you use a two-part epoxy, not ordinary wood filler. Dig out the soft wood and let the spot dry; an epoxy consolidant then hardens what's left and an epoxy filler rebuilds the shape, and it sands and paints like wood. Ordinary filler shrinks and cracks outdoors, so it isn't a rot repair. When the soft area runs deep or along much of the piece, splicing in new wood lasts longer through Northland freeze-thaw.