New doors, grim joiner, what should I expect to pay?

[jess marley]

Here are the gates to my yard.http://host.photogalaxy.net/index2.php
I know they arne't fancy, but they do have some lovely old hinges which we are keen to re-use. Anyway, we've had a joiner round to look at them and he was a bit tooth-sucky, lots of, 'well, it's not standard sizes you see etc etc...' and reckoned they would have to be hard wood, which the originals aren't)
He's supposed to be getting back to us this week, at a rough guess, what should I expect to pay?

 

[jess marley]

Why didn't my picture come out? hmmmm

 

[jess marley]

[Open Image] [Hosted by PhotoGalaxy.com]

 

[thiambal]

Joiner \Join"er\, n.
1. One who, or that which, joins.

2. One whose occupation is to construct articles by joining
pieces of wood;


Not a standard size!!!!! Sounds like he was hoping to buy an off the shelf product.

Assuming he was intending to join the pieces of wood together himself it should not matter what size they are. Or do they now training joiners only to join 'standard size' pieces of wood. Is this perhaps a new government regulation to protect the public from injury from non standard size pieces of wood. Perhaps a risk assessment showed that thousands of people have ended up in hospital having come into contact with a piece of 2x4 3/8 rather than good old 2 x 4s

OK end of rant!!!

To be honest Jess, this chap does not sound like a joiner by any reasonable definition of the word. I would save youself the misery and ignore him and his quote no matter how much it is. I imagine the chap is, as we speak, selecting from his shelf a book entitled Catalogue of Disasters.

OK, I admit it, the rant may have gone on just a but longer there :wink:

 

[andrew gayton]

jess - make your own! - Andrew

 

[Lime]

I agree with thiambal.
this "joiner" doesn't know what he is talking about.

I suppose repair is out of the question?

 

[jess marley]

I'm afraid repair really is out of the question in this case. In large areas the wood is so rotten that you can squeeze pieces of it through your fingers much as a baby squeezes bananas through theirs.
I may well consider making our own, but in this one instance, I just wanted someone to take the problem away for me.

If I were to make them myself, where would I get really good quality timber from?

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

You're probably right to think of replacement rather than repair if say more than 25% of the components would need re-making. Generally it is quicker and easier to start from scratch than to piece in bits of new timber into the existing structure.
Any real woodworker should be able to knock out a good copy of your gates, and address any design weaknesses so that the new ones last longer. With modern adhesives (e.g. polyurethane) the result should be durable for years to come.
Good quality softwood (e.g. clear redwod) carefully selected would be fine, with the advantage over hardwood of reduced weight.
As for cost, if you want a good job doing that look well and last for years then you're going to have to pay a fair rate. It's no good expecting somebody to be skilled, thoughtful and dedicated to producing an excellent result, with the facilities of a well equipped workshop to hand, who will work for £5 an hour.
Ask around for recommendations and don't be surprised if you have to work through a handful of cowboys before you find a craftsman.

 

[jess marley]

Errrm, I don't believe I said anything about expecting the job done for £5 an hour.....
As the joiner concerned still hasn't come back to me with a quote, I am fairly sure he desn't want the job anyway.
As for the more than 25% rule re. repair, there's less than 25% still sound.

Thanks for the pointer about redwood.

 

[biffvernon]

Yes, make your own. Very interesting hinges - make sure they get reused. (No idea where you would use any glue in a job like that.)

 

[Nemesis]

Spectacular hinges!

Douglas Fir is good stuff if you want to paint it.

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

Errrm, I don't believe I said anything about expecting the job done for £5 an hour.....

Sorry, Jess, I did not intend to suggest that you were being unrealistic about pricing, rather I was suggesting in a roundabout way that good bespoke joinery is inherently expensive. Even bad joinery can be pretty pricey. We'll be interested to hear what your joiner suggests.

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

Yes, make your own. Very interesting hinges - make sure they get reused. (No idea where you would use any glue in a job like that.)

Presumably the framing of the gates is mortice & tenonned, or half-lapped. I'd use glue on those joints.

 

[jess marley]

The hinges are rather good aren't they?
The joy of making them ourselves would be peeling them off, in a delicious kind of ironmongery autopsy...oooh the very thought of it.........

 

[Nemesis]

Jess - I have no idea if it was or wasn't expensive, but we had a pair of doors made for our gig house which are similar construction but larger a couple of years ago and fitted I seem to recall they were somewhere between three and four hundred quid. Douglas Fir, and a bead run along the edge of the planks.

 

[jess marley]

The joiner suggested making them differently- having a pass door within the smaller gate as "that's how they would have been."
B*!!£**s.

Andrew, sorry. Suffering from bad case of Conservation Panic at the moment.Largely bought on by financial gloom.

Nemesis-£3-400! Rock and roll!

 

[biffvernon]

joints.

Oh, right.

 

[andrew gayton]

Jess - so make your own and save money! - Andrew