Millwork
Millwork Pricing
At our millwork facility in Saxapahaw, we can process lumber that you buy from us, or process your lumber (that you’ve brought to us or that we’ve milled for you). Our most common requests are for edging, planing, and shaping boards. We specialize in shiplap and tongue-and-groove, though we can do hundreds of different custom moulding profiles.
Our millwork prices are the same whether we do it on our lumber or yours. We use two formulas: a simple board-foot formula for our most common softwood projects, and a linear-foot formula for everything else. Both are built on the same machine time, so you pay the same fair rate for the work whichever one applies to your project.
Common Projects: Softwood Siding, Paneling, and Wide-Plank Flooring
Most of the lumber we process, either for our lumber sales or for our custom sawmill clients, is pine or poplar, 1×7 through 1×9, in lengths of 10 feet or longer. For these projects, we use a simple price structure:
Kiln-drying: $1/board foot
Edging: $1/board foot
Planing: $1/board foot
Shaping: $1/board foot
Example: Pine shiplap for a porch ceiling. You buy 400 square feet of 1×8×12 pine shiplap from us:
Pine boards: $1.50/bf
Kiln-drying: $1/bf
Edging: $1/bf
Planing: $1/bf
Shaping: $1/bf
The result is $5.50/bf. Board foot and square foot are the same when dealing with 1" thick material, so the project is $5.50/square foot. A 400 square foot project costs $2,200.
If you are supplying the boards, because you paid us to mill them from your logs, knock off the $1.50/bf for lumber. Your processing cost is $4.50/bf, which is $1,800 for 400 square feet.
Our minimum for common projects is 400 square feet.
Custom Projects: Narrower or Shorter Boards, Wide Boards, and Hardwoods
Narrow boards take more passes through our machines to cover the same square footage, short boards take more handling, and hardwoods and wide boards wear our tooling faster. So for anything outside the common project sizes above (boards narrower than 7", wider than 9", shorter than 10 feet, or any hardwood), we price the work by the linear foot. That way the price follows the actual machine time, whatever dimensions you bring us or want back.
The custom formula begins with two basic costs:
Handling: $1.00 per board, for stacking, handling, and loading
Setup fee: $50 for adjusting our millwork equipment for your project
Custom Processing: Edging, Planing, and Shaping
Most custom millwork projects involve making boards into shiplap or tongue-and-groove. That takes three processes: edging the boards square, planing them to a consistent thickness, and shaping them to your profile. Each operation is priced at $0.65 per linear foot:
Edging: $0.65/linear foot
Planing: $0.65/linear foot
Shaping: $0.65/linear foot (includes both edges)
Kiln-drying ($1/board foot) and any lumber you buy from us are added separately, just as in the common formula.
Example: Poplar tongue-and-groove wainscoting. You bring us 100 poplar 1×4×8 boards, 800 linear feet in total, to make into tongue-and-groove:
Edging: 800 lf × $0.65 = $520
Planing: 800 lf × $0.65 = $520
Shaping: 800 lf × $0.65 = $520
Handling: 100 boards × $1.00 = $100
Setup fee: $50
Total: $1,710
Hardwoods, Thicker Stock, and Wide Boards
Hardwoods, thicker lumber, and boards wider than 9" take more time to machine and wear our tooling faster. For these projects, we multiply the millwork charges ($0.65 per linear foot per operation) by the adjustments below. Handling and setup fees are not adjusted.
Species
Softwoods (pine, cedar, cypress, poplar): × 1.00
Cherry, walnut, and soft maple: × 1.15
Oak (red or white) and ash: × 1.30
Hard maple: × 1.40
Hickory and pecan: × 1.80
Other species: quoted per project
Starting thickness
4/4 or 1": × 1.00
5/4: × 1.25
6/4: × 1.50
8/4 or 2": × 2.00
Width (planing only), measured on the rough board
Up to 9": × 1.00
Over 9" to 12": × 1.50
Over 12": × 2.00
Example: True 1" white oak paneling. You need 180 square feet of white oak tongue-and-groove paneling for a den. The finished boards are a true 1" thick and about 9" wide. That takes about thirty 8' boards, or 240 linear feet.
To finish at 9" wide, the boards must start wider than 9", so planing is adjusted by × 1.50:
Edging: 240 lf × $0.65 = $156.00
Planing: 240 lf × $0.65 × 1.50 = $234.00
Shaping: 240 lf × $0.65 = $156.00
Subtotal: $546.00
A true 1" board starts as 5/4 stock (× 1.25), and white oak is × 1.30:
$546.00 × 1.25 × 1.30 = $887.25
Handling: 30 boards × $1.00 = $30.00
Setup fee: $50.00
Total: $967.25
End Trimming
Millwork pricing does not include trimming board ends unless you request it. To have the ends trimmed square and clean instead of left rough-cut, the charge is $1.50 per cut. For example, trimming both ends of a board adds $3.00.
Lumber Condition
Lumber you bring us must be clean and free of metal. Time spent cleaning boards or removing nails, screws, or staples is billed at $155 per person-hour, and any damage to knives or tooling from hidden metal is billed at repair or replacement cost.