Carpentry in Los Angeles

Both are ordinary here and they look different up close. Dry rot leaves wood soft, crumbly and often darker, and it follows the water: post bases, the bottom of a fence board, under a leaking gutter. Termites leave the surface looking fine and hollow it out behind, sometimes with mud tubes running up the outside of a foundation. We probe what we are quoting. Termites mean a pest inspection before carpentry, because new wood in an active colony is just lunch.

Close, rarely exact. Old-growth redwood in a 1940s fence is tighter grained than anything on a lumber rack today, and new wood beside it reads lighter for a season or two before it weathers in. For a fence or a deck that is usually fine. For interior trim that is going to be stained rather than painted, we will show you the sample before we cut, because that is where a mismatch shows.

Both, within a size. New trim through a room, a new gate, new deck boards over sound framing, cabinets hung, a railing built and anchored: those are ours. A new deck structure, a new staircase or anything carrying the house is not, and we say so before quoting rather than after.

We can, and the first place we look is the bottom tread. An exterior stringer that lands on concrete wicks moisture up its end grain, termites follow the damp wood, and the tread sitting on top of it is the part you notice. So we open the stringer end before pricing a tread swap. If the stringer itself has split where it lands, that is structural and belongs to a licensed contractor rather than to us.

Depends what you bought. Pressure-treated lumber is often still wet from the treatment and wants a few weeks of dry weather before it takes a finish, and sealing it early traps that moisture. Kiln-dried redwood or cedar can be sealed straight away, and the sooner it goes on the better it holds color. Sprinkle water on it: if it beads, the wood is not ready.