Light Carpentry in NYC

There’s a gap in New York between the handyman who won’t cut anything and the general contractor who won’t look at a job under ten grand. Most closets, decks and floors fall straight into it. That gap is what a handyman carpenter is for: finish work that takes a visit or two, my own tools, no crew, no filed plans.

Three jobs fill most of that calendar: closet systems, deck boards, and laminate or vinyl plank floors. I measure twice, cut clean, and quote the whole thing from photos before I start. Pricing depends on the scope of the project, and my minimum service call is $130.

Custom closet installation in NYC

The standard New York reach-in is a rod, a wire shelf, and a lot of wasted air above it, two feet deep on a good day. A closet system doubles what fits in the same footprint, which makes it the cheapest square footage you will ever buy in this city.

What I install:

• Kits you already bought. elfa and Container Store designs, ClosetMaid, IKEA systems, wire and wood from the orange store. Bring the design printout or just the boxes; I bring the drill.
• Simple builds. Melamine or painted shelf-and-rod: a top shelf, a double-hang section, shoe shelving, rods set at heights that match the clothes you actually own.
• Reach-in and walk-in layouts, including the ones where the walls are plaster over brick, nothing is square, and the last shelf was held up by two plastic plugs and optimism.

The part that decides whether a closet system lasts is what it hangs on. A top track screwed into hollow drywall pulls out the first time you load it. I find the backing, hit the studs (thin steel in postwar buildings, wood in prewar) or set masonry anchors in the brick, then load-test the rod before I pack up.

Renting? A single-top-track system is about the least destructive thing you can put in a closet: one line of screws, easy to patch and paint at move-out.

Just shelves on a wall, no closet involved? That’s shelf installation, from $130 a shelf. Wardrobe still in flat boxes? That’s furniture assembly: a PAX is from $180.

What closet installation costs in NYC

A full custom closet from a closet company here, design and material and install together, usually lands in the low thousands: published NYC cost trackers put the average around $2,400–3,300, with small reach-ins well below that and built-out walk-ins well above. The Container Store bills elfa installation as a percentage of what you ordered, and it doesn’t drop below $180 no matter how small the closet is.

I sit at the other end of that. You buy the system (or the lumber, rod and brackets), I do the labor: quoted flat by the scope from photos and dimensions, from a $130 minimum service call, with larger builds worked out at $75–95 an hour and still handed to you as one number up front. A reach-in kit is usually a few hours. A walk-in with drawers is a day.

Deck repair in NYC: boards, railings and back decks

The decks I work on are New York decks: the small wood deck off the back of a brownstone, the porch on a Queens two-family, the platform on a roof that somebody already built, the steps down to the yard. (Brooklyn, New York, to be clear. Search “deck repair Brooklyn” and half the results are Brooklyn, Minnesota.)

What deck board repair actually involves:

• Cutting out the bad boards. Rot starts where water sits: the ends, the spot under the planter, the board tight against the house. I replace what’s gone and match new stock to what’s there.
• Re-securing what’s loose. Nails back themselves out every winter; screws don’t. Cupped, squeaky and lifted boards get pulled flat and fastened properly.
• Railings, posts and steps. A rail you can rock with one hand is the most dangerous thing on any deck. Tightening connections, blocking a loose post, swapping a split tread: that’s a visit, not a project.
• An honest look underneath. If the joist under your bad board is soft, or the ledger where the deck meets the house has gone punky, a new board is lipstick. I’ll show you the photo and tell you it needs a contractor, not me.

What it runs. Cost guides put deck board replacement at $10–50 a square foot depending on material, a small section of railing around $400, and a whole-deck repair budget at $1,500–3,000. Those numbers are written for 400-square-foot suburban decks. A Brooklyn back deck is often 8 by 12, so the real question is how many boards are bad and whether the frame under them is sound. On lumber: pressure-treated and cedar run roughly $4–10 a square foot at the yard, composite closer to $8–13. Labor is mine, quoted by the scope from your photos, from the $130 minimum service call.

Laminate flooring installation in NYC

Floating floors are the right call for most New York apartments. Laminate and click vinyl plank go down over a sound, level subfloor with no glue and no nails, which means the floor can come up again, and a floating install is far less of a fight with a co-op board than glue-down hardwood.

How a floor goes down:

• Check what’s underneath first. Plywood, old sheet vinyl, a flat slab: fine. Carpet, glued-down tile, a subfloor that rocks, dips or smells like a leak: that comes up or gets leveled first, and I flag it from your photos before you buy a single box.
• Let the plank acclimate. Boxes sit open in the room for a couple of days before anything gets cut. Skip that and the floor buckles in August.
• Underlayment and moisture. Foam or attached pad for sound, a moisture barrier over concrete, and whatever acoustic underlayment your building’s rules call for.
• The edges are the job. Expansion gap around the whole perimeter, door casings undercut so the plank slides under instead of getting caulked to death, transitions at the doorways, shoe molding back on.
• The door problem. A new floor sits taller than the old one. If a door starts to catch, I plane it: door planing and hinge repair is from $130.

The co-op part, and it isn’t optional. Plenty of New York co-ops and condos carry a carpet rule in the house rules, commonly 80% of the floor area covered, and most boards want an alteration agreement signed before hard flooring goes anywhere, sometimes with a specific acoustic underlayment spec. Sort that out before the plank shows up on a Saturday. Tell me your building’s work hours and elevator rules and I’ll plan the visit around them.

How much does it cost to install laminate flooring in NYC?

Market rate first, so you have the honest picture: national cost guides put the plank itself at $1–4 a square foot and installation labor at $4–8, so roughly $5–12 a square foot installed. New York runs at the top of that band and past it: city cost data stretches to about $16 a square foot on premium plank and awkward rooms, and skilled-trade labor here is well above the national average. On a 200-square-foot bedroom, that’s about $1,000–2,400 at market rates, material included.

My number is labor only, quoted flat for the room from photos, measurements and whatever is under the old floor, from a $130 minimum service call. You buy the plank, the underlayment and the transitions; I’ll tell you how much of each to order so you’re not making a second trip to the store mid-job. Subfloor leveling, carpet pull-up and hauling the old floor out get quoted on top, and you hear those numbers before the visit, not halfway through it.

How the quote works

Carpentry doesn’t fit a single “from $X” the way mounting a TV does: a reach-in closet with one rod is a different animal from a walk-in with drawers, and ten square feet of laminate is not a whole room. So instead of a made-up number, I price by scope.

1. Text a photo of the space, plus rough measurements (a closet’s width and depth, the deck’s bad boards, the room’s square footage).
2. Get a flat quote and the nearest slot, evenings and Sundays included.
3. The job gets done clean: I cut to fit, vacuum the sawdust, and take the offcuts and packaging with me.

We’re two independent handymen, Konstantin and Diana, so the person you text is the person who shows up with the tools. Konstantin’s Google profile holds a 5.0★ rating across 67 reviews. Small jobs still hit the $130 minimum service call, so the smart move is to bundle: lay the laminate and hang the closet on the same visit.

What I don’t do

Straight talk keeps us both out of trouble. Light carpentry means finish work, not structure.

• I don’t frame walls, move load-bearing structure, or build additions.
• I don’t do anything that needs a filed permit or a licensed general contractor.
• I don’t run a cabinet shop: no built-ins fabricated from scratch with drawer boxes and doors.
• I don’t glue down hardwood or lay tile, and I don’t sand or refinish existing hardwood floors; that’s a specialist trade with specialist equipment.
• If a “deck repair” turns out to be a rebuild, or the subfloor under your laminate is rotten, I’ll show you from the photos and tell you honestly what it really needs.

Where to next

• Shelving and storage systems →
• Drywall and plaster repair →
• Furniture assembly, flat boxes and PAX →
• See real carpentry jobs in the gallery →
• Published prices: the whole rate card →