Overview
Carpentry resists flat rate pricing harder than the other trades, and it is worth being upfront about that. An electrician replacing a panel is doing a job with boundaries. A carpenter hanging an interior door might be hanging a door, or might be discovering a rough opening that is three quarters of an inch out of square in a hundred-year-old rowhouse.
So this book is built differently. 207 services that flat-rate the work which repeats and use unit rates for the work that scales, with material and labor separated on every single line.
Sample line items
Real entries at Philadelphia metro calibration for 2026.
- Pre-hung hollow-core interior door: $450. Solid-core: $530
- Slab into an existing frame: $300. Pocket door, open wall: $1,160
- Trim replacement, per door: $270
- Crown molding: $40 per linear foot, so a 64-foot room is $2,560
- Decking installed: $70/sqft pressure treated, $90 cedar, $110 composite
- Deck steps: $280 each. Cable railing: $80 to $120 per linear foot
The number that costs carpenters money is "three hundred, easy job," said in a hallway before anyone checked the opening. Three hundred is the slab price. Here is the full breakdown of how the catalog is put together.
What's inside
- 207 carpentry and handyman services
- Good / Better / Best tier pricing built around material grades
- Material and labor separated on every line item
- Unit rates for decking, trim, and stair work alongside fixed-price services
- Named add-ons under each line for the discoveries old houses produce
- IRC-aligned where applicable, which is mostly structural and exterior work
- Editable Excel workbook, formula-driven, works in Google Sheets
Why material and labor are split on every line
Because carpentry customers supply their own material constantly. They bought the doors. They picked the decking at the showroom. There is a pallet of flooring in the garage from a job that never happened.
The moment somebody says "I already have the material," a blended price is useless and you are doing arithmetic in their driveway. With the split, the labor-only number is already sitting there. The $450 pre-hung door becomes a $200 to $280 labor line without you thinking about it. It also makes the upgrade conversation easy: solid-core is $530 because the door costs more, not because the work changed, and you can show that.
Who it's for
Handymen, remodelers, and finish carpenters pricing doors, trim, repairs, and deck work. If your quotes for the same job vary depending on the week and how the last one went, this is what fixes it.
Who it isn't for
Kitchens, additions, and whole-room renovations are estimated from drawings and scope. Square foot rates also get unreliable on very small decks, where fixed costs like footings and permits do not shrink with the deck. The book flags that threshold rather than pretending otherwise.
Works best with
Pricing consistently is step two. These are the three around it.
- Break-Even Labor Rate Calculator, The loaded hourly rate behind every labor figure in the catalog
- Flat Rate Options Presentation Template, Three material grades on one sheet, which customers can see and touch
- Contractor Forms Bundle, The change order you will need the first time an opening is out of square
See the full system on our How It All Works page.
Why buy this one
Built by a working tradesman who prices this work, which is why it separates unit pricing from flat pricing instead of pretending a deck and a door belong in the same column. That distinction is the difference between a catalog that works in the field and one that produces a number wrong by thousands.
- Own it outright. One payment, no seats, no renewals.
- Completely editable. Every rate, every labor hour, every add-on.
- Quote from the truck. Excel, Google Sheets, phone or tablet.
- Answered by the builder. Etsy message, usually same business day.