Carpentry and trim in Illinois

Trim and woodwork take a beating. Baseboards get kicked, door casings split, and exterior wood soaks up water until it goes soft. Nikola handles the small carpentry jobs that keep a house looking finished and keep rot from spreading.

What’s included

• Installing and replacing baseboard, shoe molding, and door and window casing
• Cutting out rotted wood on sills, trim and door frames, then patching or replacing it
• Small framing fixes, like blocking for a heavy shelf or a door jamb that’s pulled loose
• Replacing cracked fence pickets and worn deck boards
• Filling, caulking and priming new wood so it’s ready for paint

What’s not included

Structural work, like moving walls, replacing beams or rebuilding a deck frame, needs permits and a general contractor. If a small repair turns out to be part of a bigger problem, Nikola tells you what he found instead of covering it up.

How the visit goes

Nikola measures, cuts and fits on site. The saw goes outside or on a drop cloth, and the sawdust gets cleaned up before he leaves.

New trim gets nailed, filled and caulked so all that’s left is paint, or he can paint it too. For rot, he cuts back to solid wood first, because filling over soft wood only hides the problem for a season.

Materials

Lumber, trim, fasteners and filler go on your written quote. Nikola can match common trim profiles from the home center. Older homes sometimes have profiles nobody stocks anymore, and he’ll show you the closest options before he buys anything.

Outdoors, he uses lumber and fasteners rated for the weather, so a new fence board doesn’t rust its nails or rot out in a couple of years.

Timing

A room of baseboard or a few fence boards usually fits in one visit. Rot repair depends on how far the damage goes, which is easier to judge once the bad wood is out. If it’s bigger than expected, Nikola stops and talks to you before going further.