Architrave Installation Cost NSW 2026 - Get Free Quotes

What Architrave Costs in NSW

Architrave is priced per opening because that is how a carpenter measures the work. A standard doorway takes two legs and a head, roughly five and a half metres of material once waste is allowed, and the labour is much the same whatever the profile. MDF runs $80 to $140 an opening installed, primed pine $110 to $180 and hardwood $180 to $300. A fifteen opening house therefore lands somewhere between $1,400 and $4,500.

Material is the smaller share of that figure on most jobs. A length of MDF architrave costs a few dollars a metre while the carpenter's time is the same whether they fit MDF or hardwood, which is why the gap between the cheapest and dearest material narrows once labour is included. Upgrading the material is cheaper than people expect. Upgrading the profile can cost more than upgrading the timber. Two carpenters quoting the same house can differ by several hundred dollars purely on what they assumed about the walls.

Removal and making good sit outside the base rate on most quotes. Taking off existing architrave runs $25 to $60 an opening depending on how it was fixed and how brittle it has become, and repairing the plaster behind adds $20 to $80 more where the wall has torn. Neither is optional on a replacement job. Both are commonly absent from a headline per opening price.

Doing more openings at once brings the per opening rate down. A carpenter setting up for a single doorway charges a call-out that a whole house job spreads across fifteen openings, so the per opening figure falls as the count rises. Doing the house at once costs less than doing it room by room. Related carpentry rates are set out at carpentry pricing guide. Getting three quotes on the same opening count is the only comparison worth making.

What Sits Behind the Trim

Architrave has a job beyond decoration and understanding it explains most of the cost. It covers the junction where the door jamb meets the plasterboard, a gap left deliberately during construction so the jamb can be packed and adjusted plumb, and that gap is uneven by design. Nobody finishes the plaster neatly behind trim that will hide it. This is normal building practice, not poor workmanship.

Removing old architrave is where a straightforward job becomes complicated. Trim fixed with adhesive as well as nails takes plaster with it, older paint bridges the joint and tears the paper face, and the timber itself can split if it has been over-painted for decades. What comes off cleanly in one room shreds the wall in the next. A carpenter cannot know which until they start. Homes built since the 1990s are usually the quickest work, since jambs are square and walls are sheeted.

Making good is the line that separates a realistic quote from an optimistic one. Torn paper face needs sealing, chipped plaster needs filling, and a gap wider than the new architrave will cover needs a strip of plasterboard before anything else happens. None of that is included in supply and fix. Ask specifically what the quote allows for the wall.

Wider architrave is sometimes the cheaper answer. Where the existing trim was generous and the new profile is narrower, the old paint line and any damage sit outside the new coverage and need repairing and repainting across the whole wall. Ordering at the old width or wider sidesteps the whole issue. Take that dimension off the wall before you look at any samples.

Older homes hide more than newer ones. Homes built before the war frequently carry lath and plaster rather than sheeting, timber packers of varying thickness, and jambs that have moved with the house over eighty years, all of which slows the work. Allow a contingency on a period property. A carpenter who raises this before quoting is being straight with you.

MDF, Pine and Hardwood

MDF is the default for painted architrave and it performs well in the right places. It is dimensionally stable, takes paint beautifully because there is no grain to raise, comes pre-primed and costs the least, which is why most new residential work uses it. Water is the one thing MDF cannot tolerate. MDF swells irreversibly if it gets wet, so bathrooms, laundries and anywhere near an external door deserve consideration. Adhesive behind the trim is the worst case, because it bonds to the paper face and lifts it on removal.

Primed pine costs a little more and handles moisture better. It is a natural timber with some movement, takes paint well once the knots are sealed, and stands up to knocks better than MDF in a hallway or a house with children. Knots can bleed through paint if not properly sealed. A good painter blocks them before the topcoat.

Hardwood is the choice where the timber will be seen. Stained or clear-finished architrave in Tasmanian oak, blackbutt or a matching species suits period homes and contemporary work where timber is a feature, and the material cost is several times MDF. Fitting takes longer because every cut shows. Mistakes cannot be filled and painted over.

Finger-jointed pine sits between the options and is worth knowing about. Short lengths joined into long boards give a stable, straight product at a lower cost than clear pine, and once painted the joints are invisible, which makes it a sensible middle option. It is unsuitable for a stained finish. The joints show through anything transparent.

Profiles Explained

Profile is the shape milled into the face of the architrave and it sets the character of a room more than the material does. A splayed profile is a simple angled face that suits contemporary interiors, bullnose has a rounded edge and reads softer, and colonial carries the stepped detail found in most Australian homes built since the 1980s. Each is stocked in standard sizes. Anything outside that gets milled to order. Bathrooms and laundries deserve a moisture-resistant board even where the rest of the house is MDF.

Width matters as much as shape. Sixty-six millimetre architrave is common in project homes and reads as modern, ninety and above suits period rooms with higher ceilings, and the same profile at two widths produces quite different results. Taller rooms carry wider trim comfortably. A narrow architrave in a three metre room looks mean.

Standard profiles cost less because they are stocked. A merchant carrying colonial, splayed and bullnose in MDF and pine can supply from stock at commodity pricing, while a custom profile means a knife ground to your section and a minimum run milled. The setup cost is fixed regardless of quantity. That makes custom viable on a whole house and expensive on two doorways.

Consistency through the house matters more than the specific choice. Mixing profiles between rooms reads as unfinished unless it is clearly deliberate, and buyers notice trim consistency without being able to name what is wrong. Pick one profile and use it throughout. Where budget forces a staged approach, do complete rooms instead of partial ones.

Door Architrave

A standard internal doorway takes three pieces: two legs and a head. The legs run from floor to the head, the head spans across, and the joint between them is either mitred at forty-five degrees or butted square depending on the profile. Total material is around five and a half metres including waste. Labour is usually thirty to forty-five minutes an opening for a competent fixer.

Both sides of a doorway need architrave and quotes should say so. An internal door has two faces, which means two sets of trim and double the material, and a quote priced per opening should make clear whether that means per doorway or per face. This is a common source of confusion. Confirm which before comparing two numbers. Merchants generally hold three or four profiles in stock and order anything else in.

External doorways and cavity sliders both differ from standard. An external door frame is deeper and may need wider or packed architrave, while a cavity slider has a jamb detail that architrave must clear without fouling the door in the pocket. Neither is difficult with the right approach. Both catch out someone treating every opening as identical.

Where doors are being replaced at the same time the sequencing matters. New jambs, new hardware and new architrave fitted together produce a better result than trim fitted around a door that is later swapped, and the labour overlaps usefully. What a new door and jamb runs to is at door installation costs. Book the two together where both are planned.

Window Architrave

Window architrave prices differently from doors because the geometry varies. A window trimmed on all four sides takes more material than a door, while one with a sill and apron below takes three sides plus separate components, and the two arrangements look and cost quite differently. Expect $90 to $260 an opening depending on size and treatment. Large windows push toward the upper end.

The sill detail is the decision that shapes the room. A traditional sill with an apron beneath gives a period look and a surface that collects dust and objects, while a four-sided picture frame treatment reads as contemporary and is simpler to fit. Neither treatment is more correct than the other. Match whatever the rest of the house does unless you are changing everything.

Reveal depth determines whether architrave is even the right answer. A deep reveal in a masonry wall may be better finished with a lining and a small bead than with conventional architrave, and forcing standard trim onto a deep reveal looks wrong. Measure the reveal depth before specifying anything. New sashes and frames themselves are at timber window installation costs. Cased openings with no door still need trimming on both faces and are easy to forget when counting.

Wet area windows need the material choice reconsidered. Bathroom and laundry windows carry condensation that MDF handles poorly over time, so pine or a moisture-resistant board is the sensible specification even where the rest of the house is MDF. The cost difference across two openings is small. The difference in ten years is not.

Heritage and Matching Existing

Matching existing architrave is the most expensive scenario and the most common in older homes. Where a single room is being renovated in a house with original trim, the new work has to match the old or the room reads as a patch, and original profiles from the Federation and interwar periods are rarely stocked anywhere. Custom milling is usually the only route to a match. Expect $220 to $350 an opening or more. Cavity sliders and robe openings both need counting even though neither has a conventional door.

The process starts with a sample. A short length of the original trim is removed carefully and taken to a joinery, where a knife is ground to reproduce the section exactly, and the run is then milled in your chosen timber. The setup cost dominates on a small order. Doing every opening you might ever need in one run is far cheaper than returning later.

Salvage deserves a look before committing to custom work. Architectural salvage yards across Sydney carry period trim recovered from demolitions, and where a match exists it costs less than milling and carries genuine age. What turns up in a salvage yard is unpredictable. Check what is available before you commission a knife.

A listing or a conservation area overlay can restrict what you may change inside as well as outside. Most internal trim work is exempt, though a listed interior can be different, and it is worth checking instead of assuming. Heritage and planning guidance for owners is available through planning.nsw.gov.au. A phone call to council settles it quickly. Window sizes vary far more between houses than door openings do, which is why per opening averages mislead.

Mitres, Butts and Corner Blocks

How the head meets the legs is a visible detail and a real skill. A mitred joint cuts both pieces at forty-five degrees, which suits profiled architrave because the moulding runs continuously around the corner, and a well cut mitre closes tight and stays closed. A poor one opens as the timber moves. This is the single clearest indicator of a careful fixer.

Butt joints suit flat or splayed profiles and some contemporary detailing. The head sits square across the top of the legs with no angled cut, which is quicker and more forgiving, and on a plain profile it looks entirely correct. It does not work on colonial or heavily moulded trim. The profile decides the joint, not preference.

Corner blocks are a period detail worth understanding. A square decorative block sits at each top corner with the legs and head butting into it, which removes the mitre entirely and gives a distinctly Victorian or Federation appearance, and plinth blocks do the same at floor level. They are stocked in standard patterns. They also solve the problem of matching a complicated mitre.

Walls that are out of square make every joint harder. Older houses in particular rarely have a doorway that is truly plumb and level, which means a mitre cut at exactly forty-five degrees will not close, and a good fixer cuts to the actual angle instead of the nominal one. Cutting to the true angle takes longer than cutting to forty-five. It is also the difference between a tidy job and one with visible gaps.

Painting and Finishing

Painting is frequently excluded from a carpentry quote and households assume otherwise. Supply and fix means the architrave is installed, nail holes possibly filled, and nothing more, so the sanding, priming, undercoating and two topcoats are a separate trade and a separate cost. Confirm the painting boundary explicitly before work starts. It is the most common gap between an architrave quote and the finished result. Salvage yards will sometimes hold a sample for you while you check the quantity you need.

Pre-primed material saves a step without eliminating the work. Factory priming gives a sealed surface that takes undercoat well, but nail holes still need filling, joints need caulking against the wall, and the finish coats still need applying by someone. The saving is real and modest. Interior painting is priced at interior painting costs.

Caulking the wall junction is what makes new trim look installed instead of stuck on. A thin bead of paintable sealant along the top edge closes the hairline gap between architrave and plaster, and without it that line shows as a shadow once painted. Every properly finished job includes that bead. Ask whether the quote covers caulking or leaves it to the painter.

Stain-grade work demands more from everyone. Hardwood being clear-finished shows every mark, so the timber must be handled carefully, nail holes filled with matched putty after staining rather than before, and the finish applied in controlled conditions. Painters charge a premium for clear-finish work. The result justifies it where timber is the point of the room.

Coordinating Skirting, Cornice and Doors

Architrave rarely makes sense as a standalone job. Skirting meets architrave at every doorway, so replacing one and not the other produces a junction where old and new profiles collide, and the result looks worse than leaving both alone. Do them together where budget allows. The companion trim at floor level is covered at skirting board installation costs.

The junction between skirting and architrave needs deciding before either is fitted. Skirting can butt into the side of the architrave, which requires the architrave to be thicker, or a plinth block can sit at the base taking both, and the choice affects what thickness of material you order. That is a specification decision, not a site one. Make it before anything is purchased. A mitre that has opened within a year usually means the timber was not acclimatised before fitting.

Cornice is the third element in the same conversation. Where a room is being retrimmed, matching the cornice period and scale to the new architrave and skirting is what makes the room read as coherent, and mismatched elements are noticeable without being identifiable. Cornice work is covered at cornice installation and repairs. Plan all three as one exercise.

Sequencing with other trades saves money and rework. Architrave goes on after plastering and before final painting, flooring timing depends on whether skirting sits on the floor or above it, and getting that order wrong means someone comes back. What goes underfoot is quoted at timber flooring installation costs. Confirm the sequence with the builder before anyone starts.

Bundling the work reduces the total meaningfully. A carpenter engaged for architrave, skirting and door hanging across a whole house prices better than three separate engagements, because the setup, the travel and the tooling are shared. Broader fitout work is covered at built-in wardrobe costs. Ask what a combined scope looks like.

Doing It Yourself

Architrave is among the more approachable carpentry jobs for a capable homeowner. The material is light, the fixings are simple, and a mitre saw is inexpensive to hire, which makes a single doorway a realistic weekend project. The difficulty is entirely in the joints. Cutting a mitre that closes tight on an out of square opening is harder than it looks.

The tools required are modest but specific. A mitre saw, a nail gun or punch and hammer, a level, a caulking gun and filler cover most of it, and hiring the saw for a day costs far less than buying one. Hand-cutting mitres with a mitre box is possible. It rarely produces joints that close on the first attempt. Caulk and paint together do more for the finished appearance than the material choice does.

Where DIY goes wrong is usually removal, not installation. Taking off old trim without destroying the plaster behind takes patience and the right tools, and the repair work that follows a rushed removal frequently costs more than the carpenter would have charged. Take the old trim off slowly. That is the part worth being careful with.

Know the point at which it stops being worth it. A whole house of openings, hardwood that shows every error, heritage matching or anything requiring custom milling all favour a professional, and the per opening rate falls sharply at volume anyway. One doorway is a reasonable project. Fifteen openings is a job for a carpenter.

Standards, Trades and Who Does the Work

Architrave fitting is second fix carpentry and sits with a carpenter rather than a specialist trade. On a renovation it may be done by the builder's carpenter, an independent fixer or a competent handyman depending on scale, and on new residential work it is usually part of the second fix package alongside skirting, doors and hardware. There is no separate licence for trim work. General building licensing requirements are administered by fairtrading.nsw.gov.au.

Where architrave forms part of a larger contract, the usual residential building protections apply. Work above the relevant threshold requires a licensed builder and written contract, and home building compensation cover may apply depending on the value of the whole job, which matters when trim is one line in a renovation rather than a standalone booking. A small architrave job sits well below those thresholds. A full house retrim as part of a renovation may not.

Timber and panel products carry Australian Standards covering moisture content, dimensional tolerance and formaldehyde emission for engineered boards. Reputable merchants stock compliant product as a matter of course, and specifying a recognised brand or a merchant with trade accounts is the practical way to avoid the alternative. The relevant standards are published through standards.org.au for anyone wanting the detail. Very cheap imported MDF is where problems usually appear. Ordering all three elements from the same supplier keeps the profiles consistent in scale.

Consumer guarantees apply to the workmanship as they do to any service. Work must be carried out with due care and skill, which covers mitres that open within months, trim that was never caulked and material unsuited to the location it was installed in, with the framework explained at accc.gov.au. Raise defects promptly and in writing. Photographs dated at the time carry weight.

Dust and power tools bring their own obligations on site. Mitre saws, nail guns and sanding MDF all generate risks that a working carpenter manages as routine, and MDF dust in particular warrants extraction and a mask. Workplace requirements are administered by safework.nsw.gov.au. A tradesperson taking that seriously usually takes the rest seriously too. Plinth blocks at floor level solve the skirting junction neatly in period rooms.

When Architrave Needs Replacing

Most architrave outlasts several repaints and only needs replacing for a specific reason. Physical damage from furniture or moisture, a profile that no longer suits after a renovation, or paint build-up so thick that the moulding detail has disappeared are the three that genuinely justify the work. Age alone is not one of them. Sound trim in a profile you like earns its place.

Paint build-up is more common than people realise in older homes. Twenty coats accumulated over a century fill the detail of a colonial or Federation profile until it reads as a flat board, and stripping is possible but slow and messy, particularly where lead paint is present. Replacement is usually cheaper than stripping. Homes built before 1970 warrant testing before any sanding.

Water damage shows first at the base of the legs. MDF swells and delaminates where a floor has been mopped repeatedly or a leak has run down a wall, and the swelling is irreversible, so the affected legs need cutting out and replacing. Repairing a single leg is straightforward. Matching the profile is the only complication. Hiring a mitre saw for a weekend costs a fraction of what a carpenter charges for one doorway.

Movement in the house opens joints that were once tight. Mitres that have separated, gaps between architrave and wall, and trim that has pulled away from the jamb all indicate the structure has shifted, and re-caulking and filling addresses the symptom for a few years. Joints that keep reopening point at something structural underneath. That is worth investigating before spending on new trim.

Selling a property changes the calculation. Fresh trim through a house reads as maintained in a way buyers register without articulating, and the cost against a Sydney sale price is modest, which makes it one of the better-value presentation items. It works best alongside a repaint. Doing trim without painting rarely achieves the effect.

Working Out Quantities

Estimating your own quantities pays off before you request quotes. A standard internal doorway needs two legs at around 2.1 metres and a head at about 0.9, giving roughly 5.1 metres per face and 10.2 metres for both sides, and adding ten percent for mitre waste brings a two-sided doorway to about 11 metres. Multiply that by the number of openings you counted. That number lets you sanity check any material line in a quote.

Counting openings correctly is where estimates go wrong. Every internal doorway has two faces, external doors usually have one internal face trimmed, and cavity sliders, robe openings and cased openings with no door at all each need counting separately. Walk the whole house with a notepad before quoting. Most people undercount by two or three openings on a first pass.

Windows need measuring individually rather than assumed. A four-sided treatment takes the perimeter plus waste, while a three-sided one with a sill and apron takes the two legs, the head and separate sill components, and window sizes vary far more than doors do. Measure each window individually before ordering. Timber gate and joinery work is priced separately at timber gate costs. Compliance certificates are not issued for trim work, since it is not notifiable building work.

Buying in standard lengths affects waste meaningfully. Architrave comes in fixed lengths, commonly 2.4 and 5.4 metres, and cutting 2.1 metre legs from a 2.4 metre length leaves an offcut too short for anything, whereas longer stock yields better. Ask the merchant which lengths suit your openings. A carpenter ordering the job will do this automatically.

Architrave in a Renovation

Trim work sits near the end of a renovation and its timing depends on everything before it. Plastering must be finished and sanded, any wall repairs complete, and doors hung with jambs fixed plumb before architrave goes on, because trim fitted to an unfinished opening has to come off again. Getting the sequence right is the builder's job. Understanding it helps you follow the programme.

Flooring timing determines how skirting and architrave meet the floor. Where flooring goes down first, skirting sits on top and architrave legs are cut to the finished floor level, while flooring installed afterwards means both need setting at the right height with a gap, and getting this wrong shows at every doorway. Decide the flooring approach before trim is ordered. The decision changes the leg lengths you order.

Retrimming a single room in an untouched house needs a decision about matching. New trim in one room next to original trim elsewhere reads as a patch unless the profiles are close, and matching an old profile costs more than fitting a new one, which is why partial retrims often expand in scope. Look at the doorway between the two rooms. That junction is where the mismatch will be most obvious.

Wardrobe and storage joinery frequently overlaps with trim work. Robe openings need architrave or a squared reveal depending on the design, and coordinating that with the joinery avoids a clash between the trim and the door tracks, which is worth resolving on paper. Robes and internal joinery are quoted at built-in wardrobe costs. Raise it with both trades early. Lead paint testing kits are inexpensive and worth using before sanding anything in an older home.

Staircases bring their own trim complications where a renovation touches them. Architrave meeting a stringer, raking skirting following the flight, and the junction at the landing all require setting out that a straightforward room does not, and this is skilled work rather than routine fixing. Flights, stringers and balustrade work sit at timber staircase costs. Allow more time and cost for any opening near a stair.

Sydney Metro Costs

Sydney rates sit above regional New South Wales on labour, which is the dominant component in trim work. Material prices are broadly consistent statewide because architrave moves through national distribution, so the geographic variation is almost entirely in the carpenter's time. What shifts a Sydney quote most is the age of the housing, since a project home in the north west and a Federation semi in Marrickville present completely different conditions behind the trim. Access and parking add a little on inner suburban jobs.

Inner suburban period housing is where quotes vary most widely. Terraces and semis across the inner west and eastern suburbs carry original lath and plaster, jambs that have shifted, and trim that has been painted twenty times, all of which makes removal unpredictable. A carpenter quoting these houses builds in a margin. One who does not will be back asking for a variation.

Newer housing in the north west and south west is the cheapest work in the metropolitan area. Square openings, plasterboard walls, consistent jamb depths and easy parking let a fixer move quickly, and volumes in a whole-house job are large enough to spread the setup. The rate follows the site conditions. It has little to do with the postcode.

Apartment work brings building constraints that houses do not. Lift bookings for material, restricted working hours under owners corporation rules and limited parking all consume time before any cutting starts. Mention the building type when requesting a quote. Material lengths also need to fit in a lift, which occasionally forces shorter stock. An inner west terrace and a Kellyville project home are barely the same job at the same opening count.

Regional NSW Costs

Hourly rates ease once you leave the metropolitan area, though driving time and freight on long lengths claw some of it back on a small job. Two hours in the ute for forty minutes of fixing has to be paid for somewhere, so a couple of country doorways can land near a whole room in a suburb. Saving several jobs for one visit is how regional households keep the rate down. Ask what else they have booked in your district that week.

Material availability is the regional constraint people overlook. A merchant in a smaller centre may stock two profiles rather than eight, and anything else is ordered in with a lead time and freight attached. Check what is locally available before choosing a profile. A stocked profile can be several weeks faster and meaningfully cheaper. Parking and lift access add time on inner suburban and apartment jobs before any cutting starts.

Older regional housing stock is a real factor in the western and central districts. Weatherboard cottages, homes with lath and plaster and properties that have been extended repeatedly all carry the conditions that make trim work unpredictable. Set aside a contingency on any of those houses. A carpenter who has worked the local housing knows what to expect.

Coastal humidity affects material choice along the whole seaboard. MDF in a beach house with salt air and periodic dampness performs worse than pine, and the small additional cost is repaid over the life of the trim. Ask a local carpenter what they specify. Their answer reflects what they have seen fail.

What to Look Out For

Ask what the quote allows for removal and making good, because those are the lines that turn a fixed price into a variation. Architrave covers a deliberately untidy junction between the door jamb and the wall sheet, so pulling off old trim regularly takes plaster with it, tears the paper face and exposes packers and gaps. Removal runs $25 to $60 an opening and repairs $20 to $80 more. A supply and fix price with nothing allowed for the wall is not a complete quote. Freight on long lengths is a real cost in regional areas and is usually passed through.

Confirm whether the per opening rate means per doorway or per face. An internal door has two sides, which means two sets of architrave and double the material, and two quotes using the same words can mean different things. Ask the question directly before comparing figures. It is the commonest source of confusion in this category and the easiest to resolve.

Measure your existing trim before choosing a new profile. Where the replacement is narrower than what came off, the old paint line and any damage sit outside the new coverage and need repairing and repainting across the wall, which adds a painter's day nobody quoted for. Specifying at least the original width removes the problem outright. Take the measurement first and choose the profile second.

Establish whether painting is included, because carpentry quotes usually exclude it. That phrase covers installation and stops there, leaving sanding, filling, priming, undercoating and the finish coats to a painter on a separate invoice. Ask as well whether caulking the wall junction sits with the carpenter or the painter, since a missed caulk line shows as a shadow once painted.

Plan architrave alongside skirting, cornice and any door replacement instead of in isolation. Skirting meets architrave at every doorway, so replacing one and not the other leaves old and new profiles colliding at floor level, and the junction detail needs deciding before material is ordered. A carpenter engaged for the whole scope prices better than three separate engagements. Sequencing also matters, since trim goes on after plastering and before final paint.

What to Look for in a Quote in NSW

An architrave quote should state the number of openings and whether that counts doorways or faces, name the material and profile by size, and price removal and making good as separate lines. It should say whether painting, caulking and nail hole filling are included or excluded, and confirm what happens if the wall behind proves worse than expected. Ask for the profile by its trade name and width. Removal scope and the painting boundary are the two items most likely to separate quotes that look identical per opening. Quotes that itemise removal separately are almost always the more reliable ones.

Give every carpenter the same information so the numbers are comparable. The opening count, the age of the house, what trim is there now and how it is fixed, the profile and material you want, and whether skirting or doors are in scope all shape what should be quoted. Photographs of an existing opening help considerably. A carpenter working from a different brief produces a different figure for reasons unrelated to their pricing.

Ask to see a job they have completed in a similar house. Mitres that have stayed closed, caulk lines that have not cracked and consistent reveals across openings are what distinguish careful work, and none of it is visible in a photograph taken on the day of installation. A job a year or two old tells you far more. Most established carpenters can point you at one. A carpenter who inspects an opening before quoting is the one whose price will hold.

Settle the scope, the profile, the wall repairs and the painting boundary before anyone starts. Confirm the opening count and what it includes, choose a profile at least as wide as the existing, agree what happens to damaged plaster, and establish who paints. Hourly and day rates for second fix work generally appear at carpentry pricing guide. With those four agreed, architrave is a predictable job with a predictable price.