We built this detached garage in a style that matches the client’s main house, including custom cedar beams, a clear cedar cladding on the articulated garage door, custom attic vents, traditional 4-part stucco on the gable end, and cedar siding with mitered corners.
Kylemont Doors in Marysville custom built the person-door. We finished it with Daly’s SeaFin Teak Oil, then hung the door in a custom jamb and installed a Schlage L-Series stainless steel mortised lock set.
I enjoy doing drywall and plaster. Using a lift turns the heavy work of installing ceilings into a job that one person can do alone. Double skim coating and sanding is extra work, but the result is far superior.
On this ceiling we placed a layer of ¼-inch drywall over the entire room to hide a heavily swirled and cracked textured pattern. An additional beveled border of drywall produced the tray ceiling. A Level 5 finish and fresh paint made this well-worn 1950s ranch living room new again.
Ceilings are the most underused and misused surfaces in most homes. Eliminating the “popcorn” and repainting is an easy way to brighten a room and raise the ceiling. If you don’t have enough height for a coffered ceiling, you can use thin battens to produce a frame and panel effect.
This side-entrance room was three-feet square and connected the kitchen, the garage, the driveway door, and the basement stairs. In fact, this was the entry and exit that the family used most. It was the busiest room in the house.
The floor and stairs were covered in industrial carpet meant to catch tracked in water and dirt and prevent slipping. It was squeaky, soiled, uninviting, and it had that old-house smell.
We removed the stairs and rebuilt them using structural fir carriages, oak treads, and white painted pine risers. We rebuilt the foyer landing floor with 2X10 Douglas fir joists on 12-inch centers, topped with ¾-inch CDX plywood and a ¾-inch mortar base. Then we added a double layer of Schluter Ditra uncoupling and waterproofing membrane.
We custom cut our own finished floor tiles from larger pieces of split and gauged slate. This let us achieve an attractive pattern that fit our space and gave us plenty of grout lines and roughness for foot traction, even when wet. After removing steel bars from the driveway door, repairing two split door jambs and replacing a third, we re-bored the doors for new locksets, added weatherproof thresholds, a new light fixture and wall switches and fresh paint. The result was safety, cleanliness, durability, and attractiveness.
We specialize in WindsorONE painted wood trim, made in the U.S.A. “Craftsmanship Pays“
Baseboards, door and window casings, crown moulding, wainscot, shiplap, decorative moulding for walls and ceilings, and exterior trim all come in classic styles made from quality wood at reasonable prices.
If you need a new kitchen or bath, or just have clogged drains, broken drawers or doors, need a new backsplash or tub surround, or need to replace your faucets, built-in microwave or cabinets — I can help.
Like most builders in the Pacific Northwest, we get called on to build and repair wooden decks. My best advice on repairing decks usually is “Don’t! That deck is probably in worse shape than you think.”
To make your deck last, keep it free of dirt and debris, help it dry, repel carpenter ants and other nesting critters, and tend to minor damages immediately.
Decks collapse more often than you might think, and when they do people are often seriously injured. (Deck Collapse, by Robson Forensics.) It often happens with a group of people on the deck when they all move to the railing to see something. The deck pulls away from the house and collapses. It may have been under designed to begin with, or it was never attached well enough, or the fasteners have weakened from contact with treated lumber, or the wood itself has decayed due to trapped moisture or prolonged contact with dirt or leaves.
Railings are susceptible to the leverage of people leaning against them. The International Residential Code (IRC) requires deck guardrails to be able to withstand a lateral force of 200 pounds. Personally, I would not trust my safety to something able to hold back only 200 pounds when it was new. (The Simpson Strong-Tie Deck Center offers excellent material on designing and building safer decks.)
This basement was dark, old, and had flooded several times with rainwater and/or sewage. We hauled away many loads of ruined possessions, wood paneling and drywall.
We then fixed the 8-foot crack in the basement wall using the Simpson Strong-Tie CRACK-PAC Epoxy Injection Kit. (That’s a separate story involving excavation of the front yard.)
We removed all the floor tiles, cleaned the concrete walls and floor, sub-contracted the services of a plumber and an electrician, strapped the water heater to the walls, replaced the clothes dryer vent, and added new pilasters, a lighting soffit, Cat6 ethernet wiring and coaxial cable, and fresh paint.
The homeowner placed the renovated house on the market and received multiple offers the first day.
As General Contractors, we are often asked to come look at someone’s home improvement project and give them a cost estimate. That is seldom a simple or quick task. Since there is more than one way to do most things, the homeowner will likely get a different scope of work and a different cost estimate from each contractor they interview. The contractor makes a significant investment for maybe a 1-in-3 chance of getting the work.
Often the homeowner hears the first round of price quotes and then, understandably, wants to change the scope of the project. This quickly leads to confusion, waste, heartache, maybe animosity, and sometimes future problems between the chosen contractor and the homeowner.
Cost Planning is a better way. For a reasonable fee the contractor works with the designer and the homeowner to specify the project details, the materials to be used, and then estimates the costs of materials and labor.
Here is the materials cost part of a recent Cost Planning report for a homeowner who wanted to re-case several windows in a Craftsman style.
In the end the homeowner gets the design they want, a well thought-out cost estimate, a bill of materials, and experience working with their tentatively chosen contractor. The homeowner can then either confidently contract with that same builder or contact other contractors — knowing what a reasonable bid price should be for a well-defined scope of work.
For doors to work correctly all door parts should be plumb, level, square, and co-planer. This applies to every door, whether it’s a garage sale find, a new store purchase, or a custom made unit.
We work with entrance doors, side lights, interior doors, French, pocket, and cabinet doors.
Our usual services include the following:
We are a Therma-Tru Certified Door System Installer: No. 21007123
