FINISH CARPENTRY · STAVE BROOK · THE SPECIFICATION SHOP, SINCE 2012
Nothing gets cut until it is written down.
Stave & Sill quotes finish work as a specification: every opening numbered, every profile by its knife code, every hinge and backset on a written hardware schedule before an order is placed. The spec is the quote, the quote is the invoice, and all three leave with you at the measure.
The book runs three to five weeks out for packages; single-door and single-room specs usually land inside ten days. The card below holds its prices while you decide — it is reprinted each January and not between.
Services
The spec sheet, by room
Four lines of work, each priced from the same written specification. What follows is the sheet itself, condensed — your estimate applies it to your rooms, line by line and hinge by hinge.
Trim packages, by opening
Base, casing and crown run to a numbered opening schedule — 4⅝ in colonial, WM-356, or a knife-ground match to your 1928 originals. Inside corners coped, outside corners mitered and splined, every reveal held to the same sixteenth from the first room to the last.
Stairs, treads & rails
Oak treads and returned risers, skirts scribed to the wall the stair actually leans against, newels bolted through the framing and balusters spaced to code and to the eye in the same breath. Load-rated, level-walked, lamp-checked.
Libraries & case walls
Floor-to-ceiling cases in paint-grade poplar or quartersawn oak, ladder rails on the spec as their own line, shelves sized to the books you actually own. Drawn full-scale on butcher paper and signed by both of us before the first board is milled.
Window seats & mudroom walls
Benches with drawers below, hook rails blocked into the studs, bead-board backs cut to the opening. The pieces a room leans on every single morning — built like it, priced like trim, not like furniture.
Included with every package
The hardware schedule
One page per job: every hinge, knob, lever and backset, named and finished, agreed before anything is ordered. The schedule is the order — the Tuesday-morning “they sent satin instead of oil-rubbed” call does not happen here.
Schedule lines, the 2026 card
Ball-bearing hinge, per pair$38–92
3½ in, square-corner; US3, US5 or US10 finish
Passage or privacy set$118–340
Knob or lever; backset measured at the door
Pocket-door kit, hung$410
Track, hangers and edge pulls, installed in the wall
Backset change, legacy doorsno charge
2⅜ in bore adapted to modern latches
Salvaged set, reworked$140 ea
Stripped, re-pinned and made to latch like new
The written record
Fourteen years of specifications, counted the way we quote them — by the opening, by the schedule line, by the winter that did not open a joint.
Client work 2024–2026
Rooms that match their spec
Photographed at walkthrough with the signed spec sheet still on the counter. No staging, no grading — the room is the sheet, rendered.
How it goes
From measure to signed sheet
Four movements, each ending in a document you keep — whoever cuts the work.
The count
Openings numbered, walls photographed, profiles identified by knife code. Ninety minutes, free, and the count sheet leaves with you.
The spec
Rooms priced line by line against the card, hardware schedule drafted per door, both emailed as PDFs inside two days.
The bench
Stock milled, corners coped, stain-grade pre-finished lying flat in three coats — crated in install order, numbered to the spec.
The walkthrough
Sheet in hand, corner by corner. Anything the sheet promises and the room lacks gets fixed before the truck loads.
The hardware schedule arrived with the quote — fourteen doors, one page, every hinge and finish named. Our builder asked if he could borrow the format for his own jobs.
They found our 1928 casing profile by knife code in their own rack and ran sixty feet of it. The splice is under the sill; the heritage inspector found nothing to write up.
Before the spec
Asked at the counter
Why a specification instead of a lump sum?
Because a lump sum prices your fear and our guess both. A spec prices the work: this many openings at this rate, this many schedule lines at that one, materials on their own line at cost plus ten. You can check every line against the card, and the invoice is the spec with dates on it.
Cope or miter — what does the spec say?
Inside corners: coped, every one, no exceptions on the sheet. Outside corners: mitered and splined, because a cope has nothing to follow around an outside turn. The spec states it in writing so nobody has to take anybody’s word for it in year five.
Can I supply my own lumber or hardware?
Yes, if it is dry, flat and honestly graded — and it still goes on the schedule. Badly stored stock costs us both mornings, so we will ask where it has been living before we agree to cut it.
Do you finish or paint?
Stain-grade we pre-finish ourselves — three coats hand-rubbed lying flat at the bench, because finishing a hung board is finishing it in the dark. Paint-grade leaves filled, caulked and dusted for your painter, with caulk lines thin enough to make them look good.
What if my rooms are not square?
Then they are rooms. Walls get traced, floors get read, and the trim gets scribed to the trace — the house keeps its shape, the trim keeps its lines, and neither has to apologize to the other.
hello@stavesill.example · 4 Cooper Row, Stave Brook · Lic. FC-64208
The sheet is the guarantee
If a line on the specification is not true in the room — a profile, a finish, a reveal — we make it true on our own clock. Five years, in writing, transferable with the house.
Send the rooms — or just the address and the year the house was built. The count visit is free and the spec stays yours whoever cuts it.