THE FELLBROOK CREED · ONE CARPENTER · SINCE 2019
A mitered corner is a photograph of a corner. A coped corner is a promise to it. I sell the second one.
The book runs single-track: one job at a time, start to walkthrough. Rooms and repairs usually land within three weeks; trim packages inside eight. If your calendar cannot wait, I will say so on the first call rather than the last.
Who is holding the saw
One carpenter, one bench, one name on every invoice. No crew arrives after the measure; the person who traced your walls is the person who copes, finishes and walks them.
Marguerite Fell — Lic. FC-61204, Fellbrook
Seven years at other people’s benches, seven at her own. She pre-finishes everything stain-grade lying flat, writes a hardware schedule for every door, and keeps forty-one profile knives and one uncomplicated rule: the room ends when the lamp finds nothing.
Services & rates
Published rates — the 2026 card
The same card pinned over the bench. Estimates apply it line by line and hold thirty days; materials sit on their own line at cost plus ten percent, visible.
Room measure & count sheetfree
Laser, photographs, pencil estimate on the spot
Interior door, hung & latched$260 ea
Hardware schedule drawn with you, nickel-slide set
Opening cased, corners coped$175–285
Casing, base, stool and apron, caulk-ready
Crown, run & coped$13–18 / ft
Up to 10 ft ceilings, spring angles worked out ahead
Stain-grade pre-finishingin the price
Three coats hand-rubbed flat at the bench — always included
Built-in or window seatfrom $3,400
Bench-built, scribed to the opening, drawers below
Before the pencil
The three questions every room gets
Why won’t you miter an inside corner?
Because I would be selling you a photograph. Miters look perfect on trim day and open with the first dry winter — two end grains pinned against each other, both moving. A cope follows the neighbouring profile with cross-grain on cross-grain and stays shut for decades. It is slower by eleven minutes a corner and I will not price the shortcut.
Do you finish the wood?
Stain-grade, always and only me — three coats hand-rubbed flat at the bench, because finishing a hung board is apologizing for the install. Paint-grade I leave filled and caulked for your painter; the caulk lines are thin enough that they will believe you.
What if the house is old and crooked?
Then it is normal and so is the work. Walls get traced and the wood gets scribed to the trace — base follows the floor, crown follows the ceiling, shelves follow the opening. The house keeps its shape; the trim keeps its lines.
Can I buy the wood and the hardware myself?
Yes, if it is dry, flat and honestly graded — and the hardware schedule still gets written before anything is ordered, whoever pays for it. Badly stored stock costs us both mornings, so I will ask where it has been living.
Fellbrook & the valley
Rooms that passed the lamp
2024 to 2026, photographed on walkthrough day by the clients themselves — I have never once tidied a room before its own picture.
One bench, counted
Marguerite explained the cope-versus-miter thing once, at the measure, with two offcuts and a candle. Our previous house had the mitered kind. I know exactly what both winters look like now.
Single-track meant we waited five weeks. It also meant the carpenter who traced the walls was the carpenter standing in them at the walkthrough, holding the lamp herself. Worth every week.
She wrote a hardware schedule for six doors and then read it back to us. Six. Our friends think this is normal now, because I have made them all look at it.
How it goes
The one track, end to end
Single-track on purpose: your rooms are the only rooms, from the first trace to the lamp.
The measure
About an hour, free: rooms lasered, conditions photographed, budget spoken plainly. The count sheet and the rate card leave with you.
The bench week
Scribed, coped, sanded and oiled lying flat in three coats — numbered, crated, and never rushed to meet a calendar.
The install
One room at a time, dust-sheeted and extracted. Rooms in a day or two; packages in a fortnight of quiet mornings.
The lamp
Client, carpenter, one raking light. The job ends when it finds nothing — and not one minute before.
If the lamp finds it, I fix it — before we shake hands and long before you find it.