Carpentry Goes Beyond Carpentry

Recommendations from The Ultimate Handyman

In damp crawl spaces or other places where water is likely to appear, replace decayed members with preservative treated wood.

The major model building code agencies -BOCAI, ICBO, and SBCCI- require that treated wood be used for sills and sleepers on concrete or masonry in ground contact, for joists within 18 in. of the ground, for girders within 12 in. of the ground, and for columns embedded in the ground supporting permanent structures. In-place treatment with borates. Dormant fungi can be reactivated when dry, infected wood is re-wet. Consider treating infected, but otherwise serviceable wood left in place with a water-borne borax-based preservative that will not only kill active fungi, but guard against future infection as well.

An effective homemade version of Bora-Care is “Borax mixture care”

Borates:

Borates have low toxicity to humans and are even approved for interior use in food processing plants. They don’t affect wood’s strength, color, or finish ability, don’t corrode fasteners, and don’t out-gas vapors. Widely used in treating new timbers for log homes, they’re the preservative of choice for remedial treatment of wood in service.

Because of the decay hazard posed whenever wood bears on concrete or masonry, solid borate rods are often inserted into holes bored near contact areas. Should wood ever get wet, the rods dissolve and ward off infection. Infected wood can be treated with Boric Acid an extremely effective cure for a multitude of problems including control of wood rot in homes and boats and it is natures insecticide for control of fleas, roaches, termites, ants, spiders and many other household pests.

Before You Start:

Before any repairs or replacement of damaged wood is started,

I recommend a through treatment of damaged areas with Boric Acid to eliminate future problems and stop the spreading of the fungi.

Where carpentry stops being cosmetic

Most people call about carpentry because something looks wrong. A door that will not close, trim that has pulled away, a soft board on a deck, a cabinet that has dropped.

Those are all reports about something else. The carpentry is the symptom.

• A door that stops latching is usually the frame moving, which is usually the floor or the foundation moving

• Trim pulling away from a wall is usually movement or moisture behind it

• A soft board on a deck is decay, and decay means water has been there a long time

• A cabinet dropping is the attachment, and the attachment is about what is behind the wall

• A crack that reopens in the same place after repair is structural, not cosmetic

Repairing the visible part and stopping there is how the same repair happens three times.

Rough, finish and structural are different work

The word carpentry covers trades that share tools and very little else.

• Rough carpentry is structure: framing, headers, joists, load paths. It is inspected work

• Finish carpentry is what you see: trim, doors, casework, stairs. It is judged by millimetres and by the eye

• Formwork is concrete work in disguise, and it is dimensional and temporary

• Repair carpentry is its own discipline, because matching existing conditions is harder than building new

A crew that is excellent at one is not automatically good at another, and the most common mismatch is finish work done by rough carpenters or structural work attempted by finish carpenters.

What we look at before quoting repair carpentry

1. Whether the member is carrying load, which changes everything

2. Whether there is decay, and how far past the visible damage it extends

3. Where the water came from, if there is any

4. Whether the movement that caused it has stopped or is ongoing

5. Whether the species, profile and finish can be matched, or whether a larger section has to be replaced to look right

Point two is the one that expands scopes, because early decay reaches well beyond what is visible: what causes dry rot and wood decay.

Why a general building contractor

On a real repair, the carpentry is usually the middle of the job rather than the whole of it. Something caused it, something has to stop it recurring, and the finish has to be put back.

That is drainage or roofing or plumbing, then structural repair, then carpentry, then paint. Four trades and a sequence. Hiring the carpentry alone gets you the middle third.

Start with a free 15-minute call

Tell us what you are seeing, how long it has been happening, whether it is getting worse, and whether there has been any water nearby. In fifteen minutes we can usually tell you whether this is finish work or a symptom of something behind it.

Call (323) 651-0635 to book the free 15-minute consultation.

The Ultimate Pro, Inc. CA License 831700, Class B General Building. Serving Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino counties since 1996.