What is Finish Carpentry?

@stl156 - Good points there. I live in a pretty basic house, so I was with jcraig, but I could definitely see the benefit of hiring a skill person if you have a lot of custom finish carpentry that needs to be done. And even when I think about it, I have taken off baseboards and door trim when I have painted a room, and it is not as easy to reinstall as you might think.

Besides the interior, I could see the benefit of paying extra for someone to put on the outside touches as well. Again, some of that, like gutters, could be done by an experienced do-it-yourselfer, but other things aren't so simple.

What does finish carpentry pricing usually run? Do the individuals that do it usually have there own business, or do they work for someone else, or does it vary? Also, do they typically have the demand to do finish work year-round or do they work on the rough carpentry of a house first and then stick around to tie everything together at the end?

@jcraig - Admittedly, some of the things a finish carpenter does aren't really that difficult, but there are cases where the jobs can get quite tricky.

In a normal, basic house, there might not be a lot to do. You would have baseboards and door trim and that sort of thing, but most regular carpenters could do a fine job of that. I think where the real skill comes in is with things like crown molding and houses with odd or custom features.

If you have ever looked at crown molding, it is not something like base boards that you can cut at a 45 degree angle and stick up on the wall. To make corner cuts, you have to use a special saw to make detailed contour cuts so that everything fits together without holes. That is something that takes a while to master. If you have something like a custom bookshelf or mantle or similar fixture, you would want someone skilled to install that, as well.

@TreeMan - I think a finish carpentry job really is just a mix of whatever still needs to be done around a house. I remember when my parents were having their house built, they hired the contractor, and he was also the finish carpenter, since he had been in the business for a long time. Just from that experience, I would say that any building group would probably have at least one finish carpenter on staff to wrap things up.

You mentioned the windows, but I think these were installed by the regular laborers. I believe the trim and everything would have been done by the finish carpenter though. Besides that, he did a few minor things with the cabinets and hung the interior doors.

In honesty, though, it doesn't seem like doing some of that stuff would be all that difficult. Maybe not easy, but not necessarily something that a highly trained carpenter would need to be called in for. I could be wrong, though.

I always hear the tern finish carpentry used on home improvement shows, but I never really knew what all kind of work they did. I always just assumed that when you were building a house, any contractor or carpenter or whoever would have the skills to do the finishing work, but maybe that is not the case. I'd say that is especially true if finish carpentry work costs more than basic work.

What are some of the things they do besides molding and baseboards? How about things like windows? That would be something that you would see once everything else is put together. I thought usually there were special installers that put windows in, though.

The other thing I was thinking was maybe something like hardwood floors. I guess depending on where they came from, you might have to hire a carpenter or someone to install something like that.