Furniture Assembly & Mounting in Pasadena

Working in the Craftsman capital is its own craft

Pasadena has the oldest mass housing stock in our entire service area. Bungalow Heaven is a whole landmark district of 1900s–1920s bungalows, and there are hundreds more like them beyond it. We love these houses. And we know three things about them that directly affect furniture assembly.

Walls where a plastic anchor does not survive

Behind the plaster of a century-old house there is no drywall — there is wood lath: thin wooden strips over furring. A plastic anchor or toggle in a wall like that holds until the first load, then rips out with a chunk of plaster — and in a hundred-year-old house the owners cherish, that is especially painful.

So everything that hangs or anchors — a TV, a mirror, a bookshelf, a dresser strap — goes into studs only. In homes of this era the studs are not on the modern 16-inch standard: we search with a detector, double-check, and only then drill. One clean hole dead into a stud instead of three exploratory ones — in a historic house, that is what carefulness means.

Floors with a hundred years behind them

The wooden floors of old Pasadena have settled over a century: slopes and dips are the natural state, not a defect. For assembly that means one iron rule: casework — wardrobes, dressers, sideboards, sliding-door units — gets leveled with shims before the final tightening. Otherwise doors swing open on their own, drawers roll out, and a sliding wardrobe refuses to work at all: its doors always drift to the low point.

Ceilings that forgive everything

Here Pasadena has an advantage. Victorian houses and many bungalows have 9–10-foot ceilings. A 93-inch wardrobe that hits the ceiling in a typical apartment during tilt-up (an assembled cabinet rises along its diagonal, which is longer than its height) goes up freely here. If you have your eye on a floor-to-ceiling closet system — in old Pasadena it will most likely fit. We will measure and confirm before you buy.

Books are a load. Pasadena knows it

This is the city of Caltech, JPL and Pasadena City College — people here read. A bookcase in a professor’s house is not decor; it is hundreds of pounds of load.

Let us say it plainly: the bookshelf is the most underestimated tip-over risk in furniture. Its proportions are worse than a tall dresser’s: 80 inches of height on 12 of depth. Empty it stands; loaded with books — especially if the heavy ones ended up on top — it goes over from a light push. We assemble the shelf, nail the back panel around its full perimeter (that is what gives it rigidity), anchor it to a wall stud, and tell you where the heavy volumes belong. In a lath-walled house this is work for people who understand what they are anchoring into.

The August wave

Every August–September Pasadena moves in: Caltech and PCC students, new JPL hires. We see it in our own calendar. If you are arriving for the start of the semester:

• Book ahead — late August is our busiest stretch.
• Sets beat single items: a dining table with four chairs, or up to four chairs, at one flat price — against hourly handymen the difference is real.
• We will assemble the whole apartment in one visit — bed, desk, dresser, shelf — and haul the mountain of cardboard away.

How it works

• Pick an item — the price is flat and visible up front.
• Leave your address and a time window. If the house is historic, say so — we will bring lath-appropriate hardware.
• We assemble, level, and anchor to the wall everything that should be anchored.
• The packaging leaves with us.

By the way, Hastings Ranch is its own case: single-story 1950s ranches with level floors and ordinary drywall. Everything there is quick and standard — assembly often lands at the low end of the estimated time.

Where we go

Bungalow Heaven · Old Pasadena · Playhouse District · Madison Heights · South Lake · Linda Vista · San Rafael · Hastings Ranch · Daisy Villa · Garfield Heights · Orange Heights

Plus the neighbors: South Pasadena, Altadena, San Marino, Sierra Madre, Arcadia, Eagle Rock. We come up the 110 and the 134.

Frequently asked questions