Millwork and Finishing Work: Career Considerations

Have you ever noticed the fancy woodwork in your favorite restaurant? Many restaurants and establishments have beautiful woodworking details called millwork. You find millwork over the windows and doors; along walls and around built in parts of buildings. These parts also include crown moldings and trim on the ceiling.

Some places that have millwork you can go check out are The Cheesecake Factory and other restaurants, colleges, and casinos like The Mirage in Las Vegas. Casinos in fact usually have lots and lots of millwork and installation work available. The actual decorative wooden pieces are called the millwork.

There are people that create the millwork and those that install the millwork. As a summer job; it would probably be best to start out as a millwork installer. That way you could learn more about the business and make connections should you decide to go into designing and creating millwork later on.

Some things you should know about this position is that the hours can be long and sometimes the jobs aren't reliable. Your workday could be anywhere from 1 or 2 hours to 15 hours. You often may not know how many hours you will work until the morning of your job. The work you have each day is dependent upon whether other's have completed the construction work that needed to be completed before it's time for your installation. You can also get a bit dirty with this position and you should prepare to start your day as early as 5 AM on a regular basis. Sometimes you may have out of town and contract travel as well that will be paid for by the company you work for. Many colleges do millwork installation during the summer months when school is out of session.

As a beginning millwork installer; you will make about $8 - $9/hour. In order to make more money; you will need to get experience. It takes about 5 years to make over $12/hour. If you want to do this job it is important that you're not afraid to work hard. You must show up to work on time and stay away from drugs and alcohol because you will not be able to wake up for work. You also risk putting yourself and coworkers in danger without a proper night's sleep because you will be working on high ladders and in environments wherein you need to keep safety in mind all times.