Trim and Fine Finish Carpentry
in Port Orchard, WA
What Our Customers Say
★★★★★
"We hired Straight Grain Woodworking Inc to install some kitchen cabinetry, an interior storm door and custom garage storage cabinets as part of our kitchen / home remodel. We couldn't be happier with the service and results we received, especially the fine finish carpentry and attention to detail put into the work. Doug worked his butt off, staying late on more than one occasion and considerately working around our family. We are so impressed we are going to call him back to install some exterior storm doors on our patio and some custom handrails and mantels in our entryway. Great job guys, the Laborne Family."
Lou-Ann Laborne, Google Review
★★★★★
"Fair pricing, great communication and quick responses."
Jennifer Friedrich, Google Review
This is the work that happens after drywall, paint and flooring, when a house stops being a job site.
- Baseboard and shoe molding through a room, a floor, or a whole house
- Door and window casing, including replacing thin builder-grade profiles with something with real depth
- Crown molding, from a single clean profile to a layered build-up
- Wainscoting, board and batten, and picture frame paneling
- Interior doors and hardware, hung and adjusted so they latch the way they should
- Built-ins: bookcases, window seats, mudroom benches, closet systems
- Stair parts, including treads, risers, newels and railings
- Fireplace mantels and surrounds
- Cabinet and shelving work, which pairs with our semi-custom cabinetry since we build cabinets in house and also install semi-custom units from a manufacturer.
Most of this arrives as the finish stage of a larger remodel. If you are already redoing a kitchen or a bath, that is the moment to sort the trim out too. Doing it later means masking off a finished room all over again.
Why Trim Is Harder in Older Kitsap Homes
Here is something a lot of homeowners find out the hard way when they try trim themselves.
Old houses are not square. Not close.
A good share of the housing around Port Orchard, Bremerton and Manchester dates back decades, and shipyard-era homes in particular have settled in ways that show up the second you hold a straight piece of wood against a wall. Corners open up past ninety degrees. Floors dip toward the middle of a room. Window openings drift out of plumb by a quarter inch or more from top to bottom.
So what do you do when the corner is not actually ninety degrees?
You cannot fix it with a miter saw set to forty five, that much is certain.
What actually works is scribing: cutting the trim to follow the shape of the wall rather than the shape you wish the wall had. It takes longer. It also means the joint closes tight and stays that way, instead of opening into a hairline crack you notice every time you walk past.
Newer construction has the opposite issue. The angles are true, but the trim is often the thinnest profile the builder could buy, tacked on with too few fasteners. Swapping that out is one of the higher-impact changes you can make to an interior without moving a single wall.
Our Opinion on Materials, and Why It Matters Here
We get asked about MDF versus solid wood on almost every job, so here is where we land.
MDF paints beautifully. It is stable, it does not have grain to telegraph through the finish, and for painted crown high on a wall it is genuinely a good choice.
But we are in western Washington. MDF and moisture do not get along. It swells, it stays swollen, and once the paint film breaks the edge goes soft. So we steer away from it anywhere water can reach: bathrooms, laundry rooms, mudrooms, entryways, and anywhere the baseboard meets a floor that gets mopped.
Solid wood or a moisture-resistant composite in those rooms. MDF is fine elsewhere if the budget calls for it.
The other thing we insist on: inside corners get coped, not mitered. A mitered inside corner looks identical on installation day. Then the wood gives up a little moisture over the first winter, the joint shrinks, and the gap appears. A coped joint hides that movement. It takes a few extra minutes per corner and it is the single clearest difference between trim that still looks right in year five and trim that does not.
Would you rather have the job done faster, or have the corners still tight when you sell the house?
Our process runs the same way on a trim package as it does on a full remodel.
Consultation and design.
We walk the space with you, look at profiles, and talk through what the rooms are actually used for. A mudroom bench for a family with three kids and a dog is not the same bench as one for a couple.
Detailed proposal.
We give free, no-obligation estimates, with the costs laid out up front. The price we quote is the price you pay, and we can connect you with trusted local lenders who offer financing options.
Skilled installation.
Material gets delivered and left to acclimate in the house before we cut anything, because wood that arrives off a cold truck in February will move once it warms up. We protect floors, run HEPA filtration and clean up at the end of each day, so you can keep living in the house.
Final walkthrough.
We go through it with you room by room. Anything that needs adjusting gets adjusted before we call it done.
What Affects the Price
There is no useful per-foot number, because two rooms with identical square footage can differ by days of labor. What moves it:
- Profile complexity. A single-piece base is quick. A three-piece built-up crown is three times the material and more than three times the layout.
- Material choice.
Paint-grade versus stain-grade changes both the lumber cost and the level of finish required at every joint.
- How out of square the house is. Scribing takes time. We can usually tell you how much after walking the rooms.
- Built-ins versus running trim. Anything built on site is closer to cabinetry than to trim.
- Whether it is painted in place or pre-finished.
Pre-finishing costs more up front and produces a cleaner result at the wall line.
Most full kitchen or bathroom remodels we run take two to five weeks start to finish, and the finish carpentry sits in the back third of that window.
As a stand-alone package, a whole-house trim replacement is measured in days rather than weeks, though stain-grade work and built-ins extend it because of finishing and cure time. We give you a schedule with real milestones before we start, and we tell you which days we will be in the house.
If you are running several rooms at once, our
interior remodeling page covers how we sequence that.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to replace all the trim in the house at once?
No. Plenty of people do one floor, or the main living areas, and leave bedrooms for later. The one thing worth knowing is that mixing an old profile with a new one in adjoining rooms is very visible at the doorway. We will show you where the natural stopping points are.
Can you match trim that is no longer sold?
Usually yes. Older profiles often have to be custom milled, which adds lead time and cost but produces an exact match. When a match is not realistic, the better move is often replacing the run entirely rather than living with something close but wrong.
Do you do trim work if you are not doing the rest of the remodel?
Yes, as long as it is a real finish carpentry package: a floor, a set of rooms, a stair, a run of built-ins. We are a full remodeling contractor rather than a handyman service, so the work needs enough scope for us to schedule a crew properly.
Should trim go in before or after flooring?
It depends on the flooring. With hardwood we typically install the floor first and the base after, which lets the base cover the expansion gap cleanly. Our hardwood floor installation and flooring pages cover the sequencing in more detail.
Do you work outside Port Orchard?
Yes. We are based in Port Orchard at 1341 Bay St Ste 130 and work across Kitsap and Mason County, including Bremerton, Silverdale, Gig Harbor, Poulsbo and Belfair. See our home remodeling near Bremerton page for that area.
Is the work guaranteed?
Yes. We back our craftsmanship with a satisfaction guarantee, and we are a local, family-owned and operated, locally owned company, so the person who quotes the job is someone you will actually see on it.
Let's Talk About Your Rooms
Send photos, or have us walk the space. The estimate is free either way, and you will get a real number rather than a range that moves later.
