One crew, one job
We do not pull people to another site because it got loud over there. It is the reason we can only run two projects of size at a time, and the reason our dates hold.
Same family.
Same yard. Since 1998.
Ironwood is not a brand somebody bought. It is a yard on Metropolitan Avenue, four trucks, nineteen people, and two generations of one family who still live within four miles of most of the jobs.
The short version
It started because somebody got tired of apologising for other people's work.
Sal Moretti spent eleven years as a lead carpenter for other outfits around Queens. The work was fine. What was not fine was showing up on Monday to a homeowner who had not heard from the office in nine days, and having no answer for them.
So in 1998 the first truck got a name on the door and one rule went with it: whoever picks up the phone can actually answer the question. That is still how the office runs. There is no call centre, no ticket number, no “your project manager will reach out.”
Dominic Moretti came into the business in 2011 after five years in commercial construction, and brought the scheduling discipline that side of the industry runs on. That is where the daily photo update came from — it was a jobsite reporting habit that turned out to be the single thing homeowners mention most in reviews.
Today it is nineteen people across two crews. Deliberately. A third crew would mean a foreman we had not trained ourselves, and that is the exact point where most contractors start missing dates.
27 years
Same family, same neighbourhood, same phone number
How we actually operate
Four rules that cost us money and we keep anyway.
Any contractor can write values on a website. These are the ones we have turned down work over.
We will tell you not to
If the money is better spent on the roof than the kitchen, we say so, in the walkthrough, before writing a proposal. We have lost jobs this way and gotten the bigger one back two years later.
No permit, no job
If the work needs a filing and you would rather skip it, we are the wrong company. Unpermitted work is the most expensive discovery a buyer's attorney ever makes.
The bad news early
Rotted joist, undersized panel, a supplier who slipped a week — you hear it the day we find it, not on the invoice. Nobody has ever been happier to hear it later.
Who turns up
The people whose numbers you get.
On a job of any size you will deal with two of these five, and you will have both mobile numbers from day one.
Dominic Moretti
Owner · Estimating
Second generation. Walks every job before it is priced and signs every proposal. Fifteen years in the trade, five of them commercial.
Rafael Nunez
Lead Foreman · Crew A
Nine years with Ironwood, carpenter for twenty-two. Runs kitchens and baths. The one who sends the 5pm photos.
Alina Petrov
Project Manager · Filings
Handles DOB and Nassau filings, inspections and the expediter relationship. If a permit is stuck, this is who is unsticking it.
Marcus Hale
Foreman · Crew B
Additions, dormers and exteriors. Framing background, which is why the roof tie-ins on our dormers do not leak in year three.
Paperwork, in plain English
Licensing, insurance and the warranty — in full.
Never take a contractor's word for any of this, ours included. Every number below is verifiable through the issuing authority in about four minutes.
Licences & insurance
We name you as certificate holder on the COI before work starts, at no charge. If a contractor hesitates when you ask for that, you have learned something useful.
The five-year workmanship warranty
- Five years on all labour and installation, from the date of final walkthrough.
- Transferable once, to the next owner, if you sell the house inside the term.
- Manufacturer warranties pass through to you, registered in your name by us.
- Warranty callbacks scheduled within five business days, no charge, no argument.
- What it does not cover: normal wear, owner damage, and work later altered by someone else.
You get the full document as a PDF with your contract, not a line on a website. Read it before you sign — it is two pages and it is written to be read.
Around here
We are going to run into you at the deli.
That is the real accountability mechanism, and it is worth more than any review platform. When your kids go to the same school as the foreman's, jobs get finished.
- Sponsor of the Middle Village Little League since 2004.
- Two ramp builds a year, at cost, through a Queens accessibility non-profit.
- Apprentice programme with two seats open each spring — first-year carpenters, paid.
- 68% of our work comes from a neighbour or a repeat client.
Next step
Meet whoever would actually be running your job.
The walkthrough is free and takes about 45 minutes. You will meet Dominic, and the foreman who would be on your site, before you commit to anything at all.