Carpentry, trim and door repair in Lititz, PA
Trim, shelving and door work in Lititz runs the $70 hourly rate plus the $30 service charge — most take 1–4 hours, so $100–$310 before materials.
Trim and molding, shelving, closet build-outs, doors that stick or won't latch, and the small wood repairs a house needs.
What it costs
$70 per hour — most of this work takes 1–4 hours.
$30 service charge. Covers the trip and the first look. Applies once per visit, including the preset jobs.
Materials are extra, at cost, with the receipt. The full rate sheet has the rest of the fine print.
What's included
- Measured and cut on site, corners coped or mitered, and fastened into framing
- Doors planed, shimmed or rehung so they latch and swing without being leaned on, with hinges and strikes moved where the frame has shifted
- Shelves and closet rods anchored to studs, leveled, and up to what you're putting on them
- Joints caulked, nail holes filled, and the offcuts and sawdust cleaned up
What's not
- Painting and staining, unless it's quoted with the job
- Framing, decks and anything load-bearing by the hour. I do all of that, as a quoted project — see Decks & porches and Walls, framing & room changes
- The material: trim, doors, shelving and hardware
What to have ready
- Material on site if you bought it, or send me the room and I'll price material with the job
- The wall or the closet emptied
- A decision on profile and finish. Matching trim in an older house sometimes means a mill order
Where I do this work
Lititz, PA and anywhere within about an hour of it — Lancaster County and the towns around it.
Lititz, Manheim, Ephrata, Lancaster, Elizabethtown, Mount Joy, Denver, Akron.
Questions people ask
- My bedroom door won't latch any more. Is that the door?
- Usually it's the house. The frame has moved and the strike plate is no longer where the latch is. Moving the strike or shimming a hinge fixes most of them inside an hour.
- Can you match the trim in an old house?
- Sometimes off the shelf, sometimes by stacking two stock profiles to get the same shadow line, and sometimes it has to be milled. Send a photo of a cut end and I'll tell you which of the three it is.
- Will you build shelves to fit an odd closet?
- Yes, cut on site to the opening and anchored to studs. Melamine, plywood or solid wood, whichever you want to pay for and paint.
- Do you do decks and framing?
- Yes, as a quoted project rather than by the hour, with the permit handled. Replacing a few deck boards or a railing section is handyman work and goes on the rate sheet.
How the job goes
Almost nothing in a house is actually square, and trim is where that shows. An inside corner that’s ninety degrees at the top is open at the bottom, the floor runs downhill across a doorway, and a stock casing leg comes up a sixteenth short. Inside corners get coped and outside corners get glued as well as nailed, so they hold their line when the wood moves in winter.
Doors are the other half of this, and it’s rarely the door’s fault. A door that sticks at the top corner, drags on the carpet, or needs a shoulder to latch is telling you the frame has moved. The fix is a shimmed hinge, a moved strike plate, or a few passes with a plane, not a new door. Shelves and closet build-outs get laid out to the studs, leveled, and anchored for real weight.