Joshua’s Custom Carpentry

Joshua Schindelman was five years old when his father first put him to work on a renovation. He founded this Winchester shop in 2019 while still in trade school, and the company describes itself as family-owned, working across Winchester and the towns around it — Woburn, Reading, Lexington, Arlington, Burlington, Stoneham, Medford and Somerville. What comes through in the reviews is scale, not scope: this is the outfit people call for the job a bigger contractor won't schedule. A customer writing in August 2024 put it plainly — they are not afraid to take on small projects, so things get done instead of waiting forever; that homeowner had a pair of wooden screen doors and a privacy fence installed and was already planning more. Another, that same month, had a basement laundry area untouched for forty years replanned and rebuilt, and singled out something rarer than craftsmanship: no upselling, and help staying inside a basement-project budget. A third homeowner, writing in July 2024, described a hanging bookcase cabinet built for a home office, plus squeaky hardwood flooring and broken kitchen drawers repaired on the same visit. In April 2024 another had a laundry-room countertop built and basement stairs brought up to code. Seven Google reviews, all five stars, and they read like seven different people — different rooms, different budgets, different lengths. The catch is the calendar: the most recent was posted in April 2025, so the written customer record has gone quiet for more than a year. There is one outside read worth knowing. When Winchester's Affordable Housing Trust weighed contractors for a single-family renovation this April, its minutes described Joshua's Custom Carpentry as a new company with local connections, limited experience but capable. That is a town board's judgment rather than a customer's, and it is a fair sketch of a 2019 shop being measured against larger outfits. The right call for finish carpentry, built-ins, and the mid-sized project other contractors keep postponing. For the full kitchen or bathroom renovations and additions the company's own site says it takes on, ask to walk a finished one before you sign.