Oxbow Carpentry Co. runs a 9,400 sq ft shop off Chinden — sliding table saw, CNC nest, 32mm line boring and a downdraft spray booth. Face-frame, frameless or true inset, drawn in Cabinet Vision and installed by the same two people who templated it. Seven-week shop lead time from approved drawings, held on 91% of 2024 contracts.
If one of these is your house, the fix is a template and a custom knife — not a catalog page.
Our 1920s North End house has six-inch fir baseboards and nobody can match the profile in the addition.We template the original, grind a knife, run it in VG fir. Two weeks.
The city rejected our Certificate of Appropriateness for the window casing.We build sash, casing and brickmould to the Design Guidelines for Residential Historic Districts.
The box-store cabinets are fourteen weeks out and our floors go in next month.Seven weeks from approved drawings, prefinished maple boxes, no container to wait on.
There's a 43-inch gap next to the fridge and no stock cabinet fits it.Nothing here comes in 3-inch increments. It comes in your dimension.
The ceiling slopes and the crown has a half-inch gap at the corner.Scribed and back-cut on site, mitered returns, caulk doing no structural work.
Doors drag and the panels cracked after one Boise winter.Floating panels, expansion reveals, and stock kilned to 6–8% MC. See below.
Our TI inspection is in three weeks and the reception casework isn't drawn.Submittals and RFIs turned in 5 business days. We've done 26 tenant improvements.
Residential and commercial. Drawings from your architect or ours — we work with designers, builders and homeowners directly.
Libraries, entertainment walls, mudroom lockers, butler's pantries. 3/4" prefinished maple boxes, dovetailed solid drawers, Blum Blumotion undermounts and 32mm line-bored adjustable shelving.
Douglas fir bents, entry porticos, exposed ridge and purlin work, beam wraps and mantels. Cut in the shop, dry-fit on the floor, raised on site with a Simpson-engineered connection schedule.
Treads, risers, skirtboard, box newels, over-the-post rail systems and volutes. We build to the guardrail and graspability requirements Boise PDS actually inspects — no failed finals.
Dining tables, islands, desks, benches. Slab tops flattened on the CNC, breadboard ends that let the top move, hardware set in mortises instead of surface-screwed.
Whole-house trim-outs for builders: casing, base, crown, chair rail, wainscot, plinth blocks, coffered ceilings, stile-and-rail doors. Custom knives ground for period matches.
Cedar and clear fir pergolas, framed decks with hidden fasteners, screened porches. Anything over 200 sq ft gets a City of Boise building permit pulled before we dig.
Real ranges from 2024–25 Treasure Valley contracts. Nobody quotes a kitchen from a phone photo — these are the bands your project lands in before we measure.
How the money moves: $650 retainer to start drawings → 45% at drawing approval, which locks your lumber price → 45% when the finish comes off the booth → 10% at punch-list sign-off, signed by you, not by us. Project financing available through third-party lenders. We do not discount custom work; at contract signing we do add the soft-close upgrade and a drawer organizer package at no charge.
The lead time is the product. Here is where your project actually is on any given Tuesday.
Laser measure, plumb and level checked, existing profiles traced onto card stock. We photograph every wall we'll scribe to.
Week 0 · 90 minutesDimensioned elevations and sections in Cabinet Vision. You mark them up. Three revisions included; nothing gets cut until you sign the set.
Week 1–2CNC nested parts, edge banded, line bored, labeled and racked by room. Solid stock milled to 6–8% moisture content.
Week 3–6Catalyzed conversion varnish or waterborne, sprayed in a downdraft booth, cured 72 hours on racks before anything gets wrapped.
Week 7–9Blanket-wrapped on the trailer, scribed to your walls, hardware set, doors tuned. We walk it with you and write the punch list ourselves.
Week 10–12
The Treasure Valley gets about 13 inches of precipitation a year. Interior relative humidity swings from roughly 75% in January down near 36% by July. Wood does not care about your design budget — it moves.
That is why every glued-up panel here floats in its groove, why door stiles get an expansion reveal instead of a tight fit, and why we will not deliver casework into a house that doesn't have conditioned HVAC running yet. We meter every board off the rack. If it isn't between 6% and 8%, it doesn't get cut.
"We've never gone back for a cracked panel on a job we metered. Not once since 2009."
Photographed the week we handed them over. No staging, no borrowed props.
Original fir casing templated and reproduced with a ground knife so the new pantry wall reads as old. Butt hinges, toe-kick drawers, a 43-inch filler cabinet where the fridge gap was. Drawings approved March 4, installed May 22.
Submittals in five days, solid-surface transaction top, ADA-compliant lowered section. Delivered nine days ahead of the certificate of occupancy inspection.
Six bays, bench at 18", boot cubbies below, sprayed catalyzed varnish. Built and installed inside the builder's four-week window between flooring and final trim.
The person who measures your house is the person who installs it. No sales rep, no subcontracted install crew.
22 years in the trade, opened the shop in 2009. Does every field template and every final walkthrough personally. Registered with the Idaho Contractors Board.
Runs Cabinet Vision and the nest-based CNC. Handles commercial submittals and RFIs — the reason TI packages leave here in five business days.
Eleven years spraying conversion varnish and waterborne. Keeps the sample kit — 30 stepped finishes on your actual species, sent home with you.
Cuts every stair and every timber joint in the shop. Former framer, which is why the rails pass Boise PDS final inspection the first time.
On paper: Idaho has no carpenter's license — contractors register with the Idaho Contractors Board under the Idaho Contractor Registration Act (Title 54, Ch. 52). Our registration number is posted on every jobsite sign and permit, per §54-5209. We carry $2M general liability, $1M auto and statutory workers' comp — the actual limits, not the statutory floor. 5-Year Craftsman Warranty on shop-built work, terms in writing with your contract.
Straight answers. If yours isn't here, call the shop and ask Wes.
Because a kitchen price is a function of linear feet, door style, species, and how out-of-square your 1920s walls are. What we will do on the phone in ten minutes is tell you which band on the rate card you're in and whether we're the right shop for it. The dimensioned number comes from the $650 Design & Measure Consultation, and that $650 comes straight off your contract.
Yes, and not with the closest thing at the lumberyard. We trace the existing profile, send it out for a custom knife ($210–$390, one time), and run the moulding in the same species — usually vertical-grain Douglas fir or Idaho white pine for pre-1940 stock. The knife stays on file under your address for future phases.
If you're in a registered historic district and changing anything exterior — windows, porch columns, siding, an addition — yes, the City of Boise Historic Preservation Commission reviews it. We build to the Design Guidelines for Residential Historic Districts and have supplied drawings and profile details for eleven COA submittals. We don't submit the application for you, but we give your designer everything they need.
Real, and it starts the day you sign the drawings — not the day you call. We held it on 91% of 2024 contracts. The three that slipped were a walnut slab that came in wet and two jobs where the homeowner changed door style after approval. We tell you the day we know, not the week before install.
Small jobs, yes — a single vanity, a bookcase, a stair rail that failed inspection. What we call Punch List & Warranty Response covers water-damaged sink bases, jobsite-damaged doors before certificate of occupancy, and warranty callbacks on our own work. We are not a 24-hour emergency trade and we don't pretend to be.
About 60% of our volume is exactly that. Builders and designers get the Trade Program: shop-direct pricing, one contact for submittals, and delivery scheduled to your critical path rather than ours. Send drawings to shop@oxbowcarpentry.example and you'll have a takeoff back inside a week.
Tell us the species you like, the month you need it, and whether there's a builder on the clock. If we're not the right shop for it, we'll say so and name someone in the Valley who is.
Mon–Thu 6:30a–4:30p · Fri 6:30a–noon
Site visits booked Tue & Thu afternoons
Tell us what's going on and we'll get right back to you.
Prefer to talk? Call (208) 555-0163