FINISH CARPENTRY · BELLWAITE · OLD-HOUSE SPECIALISTS

Cut to the house you actually have.

Longleaf is a finish crew for pre-1940 homes: trim run to walls that drift, stairs scribed to carriages that were never plumb, millwork matched to profiles nobody stocks anymore. Old houses are not square. That is the job, and the whole job.

Services & rates

Per-piece, per-foot — the 2026 card

Old houses punish lump-sum guessing, so we price by the piece and by the foot and print the card on the estimate. The measure visit turns your rooms into lines you can check.

Interior door, hung & latched$265 ea

Easing, stops and hardware tune included

Opening cased, coped corners$175–295

Casing, base, stool and apron

Crown, up to 10 ft ceilings$12–18 / ft

Any of 38 historic profiles on the rack

Profile knife, custom ground$185 one-time

For casing nobody stocks; the knife is yours to keep

Built-in wall, paintedfrom $7,200

Eight feet, drawers on soft-close runners

Stair rebuild, oak over pinefrom $10,600

Treads, risers, skirts, rail and balusters

What we do

Where old houses need us most

Trim that matches, not merely fits

Trim that matches, not merely fits

We carry knives for thirty-eight historic profiles and grind new ones when yours is not on the rack. Splices land under the sills; the pattern runs on as if the house had never been touched.

Stairs taken back to the frame

Two previous crews have usually been at an old stair by the time we arrive. We strip it to the carriage, sister what has rotted, and scribe the skirts to the wall the house has now — not the one it was built with.

Stairs taken back to the frame
Seats and shelves that belong

Seats and shelves that belong

Window seats sized to the original opening, plate shelves at the height the plaster says they hung, mudroom benches built to take a farm boot. Cut at the bench, set in a day.

How it goes

A Longleaf job, start to sign-off

The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.

  1. Visit 1

    The measure

    Laser, profile gauge and a long look at what previous decades did. Free — the drawings and the rate card leave with you.

  2. Day 3

    The line-item quote

    Your rooms priced by piece and by foot from the current card. Fixed thirty days; materials at cost plus ten percent, shown as their own line.

  3. Weeks 1–3

    Bench and site

    Profiles milled, parts coped and finished flat at the shop, then installed one room at a time with dust control that respects an old floor.

  4. Final day

    The lamp walkthrough

    A six-inch level and a bright raking lamp, corner by corner. We fix what the lamp finds before the truck loads — a hundred-year-old wall gets the same standard as a new one.

They matched 1927 casing in a house where none of it was stock anywhere. The splice sits under the sill; even I cannot find it, and I watched them cut it.
E. Hartley-Cross · Full re-trim, 2025
Every other crew quoted the stair with a shrug built into the number. Longleaf quoted it by the tread and finished ahead of their own schedule.
S. & R. Dalloway · Stair rebuild, 2024
Our house has been settling for a hundred years and the new wainscot does not care. It was cut to the house, not to a plan.
Marguerite Bell · Panel hall, 2026
Our house is genuinely crooked. Is that a problem?

It is the job description. Nothing in a pre-1940 house is square, level or plumb, so we scribe rather than force: skirts to walls, mantels to stone, cases to ceilings that drift an inch across a room. The wood follows the house, and both stop arguing.

Can you match trim that is not made anymore?

Usually. Thirty-eight profiles ride on the rack; anything else takes a knife ground for about $185 — a one-time charge, and the knife is yours to keep. The harder part is matching a century of patina, and we blend that by hand at the bench.

What does living through the work look like?

One room at a time, plastic at the doorways, HEPA extraction on the tools, and runners on every floor we cross. Old floorboards get rosin paper and a plywood path, not hope.

Do you take whole-house restorations?

The trim, stairs and built-ins, yes; foundations and rewiring, no. At the measure we tell you which parts of your list are ours and recommend crews we would let into our own houses for the rest.

Bring us the crooked rooms

The measure is free, the card is published, and the quote is line by line — check it against anybody.