carpentry in Bentleigh East

For small and unpredictable work such as door adjustments, trim repairs or maintenance items, qualified carpentry labour in Melbourne generally runs $80 to $120 plus GST per hour, with a day rate around $650 to $950 plus GST. For defined jobs we quote an itemised fixed price instead, because you should not be paying by the hour for something we can measure. As a reference for the work we do most in Caulfield, decking sits at $350 to $650 or more per square metre installed, door hanging and trim at roughly $120 to $250 per door set, and removing a load-bearing wall with a steel beam at $3,500 to $9,000 including the engineering. We are Caulfield based, so the site visit is free and same day.

Yes, all three, along with Glen Huntly, Ormond, Carnegie, Elsternwick and Murrumbeena around them. The three Caulfields are different jobs, though. Caulfield North carries more period stock and more heritage overlay, Caulfield South leans post-war brick and weatherboard, and Caulfield East is dominated by the racecourse, the university campus and the rental housing that surrounds them. Tell us the street and we will tell you what we normally see there. Call 0468 347 781.

Yes, and this is a large part of what we do in the older Caulfield North streets. Weatherboard profiles vary more than people expect, and a bullnose, chamfer, shiplap or rusticated board will read as an obvious patch if the wrong one goes back in. We match the profile to the existing boards rather than to whatever the supplier has in stock, and we replace only the damaged boards rather than a whole elevation. The same applies to skirting, architraves and window mouldings on period homes. Where the overlay means a permit is needed, we tell you at quote stage and price the timeline in.

That is the signature of reactive clay, which is common right through this part of Melbourne's south-east. The ground swells when it takes water through winter and shrinks back through a dry summer, and a few millimetres of seasonal movement in the footings is enough to drop a door frame out of square, open a mitre on an architrave or crack the same cornice every year. If it comes and goes with the season, it is usually movement and the fix is adjustment. If it appeared and never went away, something under the house has likely failed and it needs a subfloor inspection rather than a plane down the door edge. We check which one you have before quoting.

We are based in Caulfield, so this is our closest work and site visits are free and same day. Once you accept a quote we have a carpenter on the tools within three days. For urgent items affecting security or weather-tightness, such as a forced door, a broken window or storm damage, we run a 24/7 emergency make-safe service and we will get there far faster than that. Our standard hours are Monday to Friday 7am to 5pm and Saturday 7am to 2pm.

That is a bigger question than a carpenter should answer alone, but we can give you the structural half of it honestly. Renovation makes sense when the existing structure is sound, the layout can be made to work, and the parts you would be replacing are finishes rather than framing. It stops making sense when the subfloor and stumps are failing, when the roof structure will not take what you want to add, or when you would end up replacing so much of the original that you are paying rebuild prices for a compromise. Bentleigh East has plenty of houses in both categories. We will tell you which one yours is after we have been under it, and we will tell you if the answer is that you should be talking to a builder about a rebuild instead.