So you are thinking about commissioning a project?

Many people find this stage to be either the most exciting or frustrating: the planning.

In order to ease your mind, we’re going to walk you through our typical estimating process:

Step 1

You gather ideas, inspiration images, perhaps even sketch out a rough drawing. Ideas can be half baked at this moment as we can be there for you to help you cook them.

Step 2

You contact us. Typically this may start out as a phone call, DM, email or text. We will then re-direct you to our handy dandy CONTACT FORM. This gets some key information down right away. This form includes things like your cell number (to reach you in the event that our reply to your form ends up in your spam folder - it happens lots), your budget (these numbers help both of us to determine if this is a viable project - no judgements here), and more. When you contact us, please try to include as much information as possible - see DESIGN DECISIONS below for relevant info. Pictures will not be able to be attached in the contact form, but we will follow up for some shortly after.

Step 3

We reply to your contact form requesting more information after initially reviewing your project. This is your chance to email back with photos of your space and send any inspiration pictures you may have saved. This is often the stage where we request a site visit to take measurements or help you decide what would make the most sense for your space.

Step 4

We give you a ballpark cost. If all sounds good, we can move forward. We will take a deposit for your project (usually 50%) and have you sign our contract. We can then do any fine tune design work including sending you renderings of your project, getting you samples and so forth. With the design finalized, we will also be sending the official project estimate and book you into our schedule.

Step 5

You wait, hopefully patiently, for your project to be built :) We build it, you pay us the remaining amount, and we are available to answer any of your project maintenance questions until the end of time.

Design Decisions

WOOD SPECIES SELECTION

If you are reaching out for a quote on custom furniture, interior finishes or choosing one of our existing designs, we’re going to need you to pick a wood species!

We will ask you to choose a fave or two to base your estimate off of. They are listed in order of least expensive to most expensive (current pricing). If you are looking for a specific species not listed here, please let us know. We also frequently use softwoods like cedar and douglas fir.

Hardwoods We Commonly Use

WOOD FINISHES

J-Man Carpentry primarily relies on eco friendly finishes for your wood projects. We also believe in choosing the right wood and using a clear finish to allow for the natural beauty to shine through. However, we do offer staining and painting as finish options as well.

For those interested: we primarily use Osmo Polyx Hardwax Oil, Walrus Oil, Detwiller Linseed Oil and sometimes Rubio.

DIMENSIONS

Please include any possible measurements that will be helpful for us. If you use fractions or decimals in your measurements, we’re going to assume that you know how to properly read a tape measure haha. If you aren’t that confident with a tape measure, please use whole numbers (e.g. 54”) and the words about, approximate or “ish”. We’ll use these rough measurements to estimate with, however, we truly only trust our own measurements so if it requires it, we’ll come measure the space ourselves.