Craftwork Renovations handles kitchen and bathroom remodels, basement finishing, deck construction, flooring, and painting for homeowners across the Portland metro area. With transparent pricing and no subcontracted surprises.
We schedule site visits Monday through Saturday. Estimates are written, detailed, and free.
Portland has tens of thousands of homes built before 1950, and most of them still have their original double-hung sash windows. Those windows are worth keeping. Here is what the restoration process looks like, what it costs relative to replacement, and when replacement is actually the right call.
Read more →One of the most common problems in renovating a pre-1950 Portland home is trim. The original moulding profiles. The ogee casings, the back bands, the built-up crown details. Were milled to specifications that lumber yards stopped carrying in the 1970s and 1980s. When a section of original trim is damaged or missing, the options are: find a salvage yard that has matching stock, order a custom run from a millwork shop, or make it yourself. We do the last one.
Read more →Portland basements are not all the same. Some are dry, well-drained, and ready to frame. Others have moisture issues that need to be addressed before a single stud goes up. Getting the sequence right matters more in the Pacific Northwest than in drier climates, and skipping steps early in the process creates problems that are expensive to fix later.
Read more →Daniel Hartwell grew up in Southeast Portland and spent his twenties working finish carpentry on commercial fit-outs and residential renovations across the metro area. He trained under a journeyman carpenter in the Carpenters Union Local 1503 and spent twelve years as a site supervisor for a general contractor in the Pearl District before founding Craftwork Renovations in 2014. He opened the SE Division woodshop in 2018 specifically to reproduce period trim profiles that had disappeared from lumber yards. Outside the shop, Daniel restores vintage hand planes and keeps a running list of every Craftsman bungalow in Ladd's Addition that still has its original windows. He believes the best renovation is the one that makes a house look like nothing was ever touched.
Yes. We have worked on homes in the Ladd's Addition Historic District and several properties on the Portland Historic Resources inventory. We are familiar with the review process and can help you understand what changes require approval before we scope the work.
That is exactly what the woodshop on SE Division is for. We measure the existing profile with a profile gauge, set up the shaper, and mill the replacement from clear vertical-grain fir or poplar. It takes a little longer than ordering off the shelf, but the result is indistinguishable from the original.
It depends heavily on scope and permit timelines. A full kitchen renovation typically runs four to six weeks. A basement finish is six to ten weeks. A whole-house renovation with multiple trades involved can run four to eight months. We give you a realistic schedule in writing before work begins, not an optimistic one.
We rebuild and restore existing sash windows in the woodshop: new glazing, re-roped weights, weatherstripping, and refinished sashes. We do not manufacture new window units from scratch, but for most period homes, restoring the original sash is a better outcome than replacing it with a new unit.
