The Stripp Joynt

Oh my! So we just had our three interior doors delivered and WOW they look incredible! These guys are true artists, we had three interior doors covered in 2 – 3 layers of ugly white/​yellow paint and the doors themselves were pretty beat up but we are in the midst of restoring our Chicago bungalow and wanted them to be back to their beautiful original state and that’s EXACTLY what the guys at this Stripp Joynt have done! Seriously, they look and feel incredible! Expensive yes but you get what you pay for and I would definitely recommend paying the extra and having these true professionals restore your doors. They picked up and delivered and made all the hardware look beautiful too. So so happy and money definitely well spent!

The Stripp Joynt is awesome! We are renovating a 100 year old apartment and have had trouble getting all the many coats paint off of our wood work. The Stripp Joynt got back to us right away and set up an appointment to come out. They quickly sent us a proposal and the prices were very reasonable. Once we booked with them, they came out a few days later and picked up all the pieces. 2 weeks later they returned them to us and we were so happy with the work that was done. They lived up to all of their promises and delivered our windows and doors back to us right on schedule. We couldn’t be happier with the communication and quality of work. We wouldn’t hesitate to call on them again.

We had some old leaded paint shelves that we needed stripped and they did a great job at a very reasonable price. We liked Moises and Patricia, so also asked them to give us a bid on painting our kitchen cabinets and the counter tops for that project.

We had the paint on our 100 year old front door stripped and I LOVE it! The price was very affordable and the wood grain makes me smile every time I come home. A couple of months after the work was done we had some problems with the lock mechanism being wiggly on the door. I emailed and they sent someone right over to fix the issue. I would recommend The Stripp Joynt’s services because they are affordable, they did good work, and they take care of their customers!

decent for what I needed them for (strip window casing and baseboards from my home). They did a good job but I would not call their pricing reasonable by any means. They are outright expensive.

So pleased with my grandmothers dining room buffet. Had two layers of different colored paint stripped and refinished. Will
Not hesitate to use the SJ in the future.

Well what started out as promising has turned to complete crap! So I am having roughly 600 linear feet of board that needs to be salvaged from a house project. So I decided that rather than take all of it there to get a quote to take a sample. Which Moises wife states to me that it will cost about $ 2.00 a foot to strip. She than tries with the up sell of sealing and what not, however being this is not my first rodeo and I explained that I am going to be repainting with white paint. So fast forward to today when I drop off 600 feet of this stuff and she resends me an estimate in almost triple the amount we agreed upon. So after a brief conversation I took my stuff back and am back to the start. However I am giving one star based off of the work they look like they are doing, which does look nice. I would just be very careful about pricing because they all seem to go back and forth over price, and no conversation is in English.

we bought an old tudor home built in 1928 with great bones but boy oh boy did the woodwork need some love. i searched for a while and found a few places that did woodworking in addition to their main business.
then, while visiting at a neighbor’s home, i commented on how beautiful her woodwork looked and asked if she had just recently had it refinished and where?
she told me about the stripp joynt on elston. she said she’d had her woodwork done well over 10 years ago and wasn’t even sure if the place was still in business. several of the women in the room were shocked to hear the work had been done so long ago. it looked beautiful, new and in terrific shape.
i got online and found the place. whiile it’s changed locations, it is still the same family run buiness and now being run by one of the original owners son, moses.
when i called i was surprised at how friendly patty was. she offered to send someone out right away to see the project i had in mind and offer me a quote.
ivan and another worked came out the next day! they looked at my tudor style large heavy front door with it’s original hardware and said that the project was just excactly the backbone of their business. i stressed that the door and woodwork in this home were what inspired me to buy the home in the first place. they understood my concern that the door would be handled with care and the job done well. they invited me into their workroom on elston to see the scope of other similar projects they were working on. after the visit it was clear to me that i’d be willing to allow them to take my front door for refinishing. it was december and since my screen door was in such disrepair, i needed my front door back quickly. they returned my door in a snowstorm, two days later, as promised. neither my husband nor i could believe our eyes. our prize door back and looking more beautiful than either of us thought possible. each time i drive up to our house, i feel proud that our entry way looks so stately. it’s given us terrific curb appeal.
since then, patricia, moses and ivan have restored 14 wooden doors in our upstairs. the stripp joint has become a household name that we trust, whenever we have a wood proect. i wouldn’t trust the woodwork in our old house to anyone else.
they are pleasant to work with, responsible and their prices are extremely fair for the quality of their work!

Moises and crew do a really outstanding job. Their Chicago wood working and custom furniture experience is highly recommended by me. I had them build for me a number of custom furniture pieces and they did a very fine job. I recommend Ivan to do the wood staining and have Moises do the custom furniture building. Moises did a really top notch job on my computer monitor stand. It’s a thing of beauty to behold. In communicating with them be sure to always specify the color and sheen of the urethane stain as this is custom work they are doing. Have the color picked out and they will match it correctly with the sheen you specify to them. I learned that they do a lot of furniture refinishing so in this arena of wood working their work is simply the best you can get in Chicago in my humble opinion. I had them refinish a number of old furniture pieces of mine and now everything coordinates well in my home and I am very pleased with their work.

The Stripp Joynt was the most prompt in their estimate, the best price and so quick! I brought in a Craigslist find and they restored the table to its original beauty within the week. I couldn’t be happier with the workmanship, service and delivery. I am so pleased to support a neighborhood business. Thank you, Stripp Joynt!

The Stripp Joynt removed a set of french doors from our home, and stripped and refinished them. I had thought I would refinish them myself after they were stripped, but I am so, so glad I had them do it! When they returned and installed the doors, I could not believe how beautiful they were! The young men who did the work were professional, courteous, and rightfully proud of their work. They painted the outside of the doors, and they look incredible also. I would highly recommend this business, and while their prices are not cheap, their work is worth every penny. It would have taken me hours and hours to do this myself, and it never would have been as beautiful as it is!

never again.
i have hired the stripp joynt on 8 different projects (more than $ 15K) over 3 years. i’ve been very patient and forgiving, but in the end there were so many mistakes, damages and difficulties, it really just scared me to have them in the house anymore. the most accurate and fair rating i could give would fall somewhere between –3 and –5 stars.
they have screwed up in some spectacular and totally unnecessary ways, like the time five of the guys came into our house early in the morning, without permission, and walked in on my wife, totally naked in our bedroom, scrambling to cover herself up and totally confused why these guys were in her house. but that’s not what got them fired — their sloppy work, broken agreements, denials and excuses is what did them in.
they quit in the middle of the last job, with 8 windows incomplete. moises said he didn’t think they could meet my expectations. of the 8 windows, i found two had chains too long to hold top sashes closed. one had chains too short, so it didn’t fully close. all 8 were assembled improperly, so that good seals were not made. none of the chains were attached to sashes with safety screws and one chain pulled out within 24 hours. i had to take all 8 windows apart and reinstall them myself, making proper seals. in the process, i found other small things done poorly, like using the wrong kind of nails for the job.
in an earlier job, 5 other windows were declared finished, but they were obviously not sealing or fitting. i refused to pay and called moises to come inspect. at first he assured me that they were just old, that this is how my windows fit. when they finally took the windows apart, it turns out that they’d just ignored their own markings and put them all in the wrong places, with top and bottom sashes mismatched. it’s a small detail on top of that, but the handles and locks were installed with 6 or 7 different kinds of screws, rather than one uniform kind.
in their 2^nd windows job, we asked them to use the same satin finish they used in the first, to match their own work. instead they sprayed 4 windows and 2 rooms of baseboards and door frames with semi-​gloss that did not match. when they resprayed, they mixed the lacquer incorrectly, so all of those pieces developed a foggy, hazy white finish. we waited a year for it to clear up, which it eventually did, but now that the weather has turned cold again, it is hazing up again. having this job fully paid but not finished is why i hired them again, hoping that if i stayed with them they could eventually make this job right, but then they walked out.
along the way, they ate food out of our garden, failed to return tools they borrowed, lost original parts of our windows, replaced but did not properly replicate other window parts (so proper seals were not made), stained a brand new concrete front porch, and left their lunch trash in our yard. their floor refinishing guys tried and failed to repair a prominent mistake and some damage they did to previously refinished floor. some time after that 1^st window job, i found out they charged me an additional $ 100 for hardware that cost $ 35.
the first job they did, a simple clear coat of a new wood door turned out great. they did a nice job on a set of french doors, except that they didn’t bother to remove the hinges from the doors, so that when they put them back together, one side of each hinge is lacquered and stained, the other half is stripped and polished… creating a zebra effect. the same sloppiness shows up in the 3 casement windows they refinished, as well.
because i did all my own exterior painting on the four different window jobs they worked on, i can tell you their glazing job was sloppy. i asked for a cost reduction on our last job and had all the glazing done by another company, so it would look good on the front of the house. along the way, they did so much damage to the other guys’ glazing job, half of the sixteen windows had to be glazed a second time to make it right.
if all you need is a simple coat of spray lacquer, or need six layers of paint removed, the stripp joynt can do that. if your job requires any special attention, or if anything around your job is already finished and in good condition, having them in is risky. be ready for agreeable promises but potentially surprising, frustrating, delayed and perhaps even irreparably damaged results.
moises’ typical first response will be to assure you that what you’re complaining about did not happen, is not a problem, or is only the fault of some other worker or the age of your house. after five guys walked in on my wife, he told me it didn’t happen even though he wasn’t even there. he assured me that our windows didn’t fit because they were just old, but of course we then found, very objectively by their own numbering, that their own work was to blame.
you don’t want these guys working in your house. it’s just not worth the hassle.

This it truly one of the most amazing companies that I have ever dealt with. We have been using them for nearly 20 years as we progressively redo our 100 year old house a stage at a time. We have dealt with various brothers in this family run team starting with Filipe, then Moises and now with Ivan their nephew. They are professional, kind and considerate and are clean and very detail oriented. We have had them work on all sorts of wood work in our home from elaborate 15 inch crown molding, dry rotted ornately carved newel posts, dried out oak and maple flooring, warped oak and birch window sills, doors with wood worm damage, missing pieces and every kind of trim. They have also refinished several pieces of antique furniture for us as well.
I will admit to being one of the fussiest, most demanding people around when it comes to having work done on my house. Certainly shocking top me is that they not only accommodate me but that they meet and even exceed my expectations.
Most recently we had them work on the master bedroom upstairs (after 18 years we are finally nearly finished with the house) and they had to stain 4 different kinds of wood (some old, some new and some badly pickled) so that they would all match. They were here one day to pick up the doors and another to stain and varnish everything. They followed up by coming back a third day to clean up and repaint areas on the walls of the room that had accidentally gotten nicked or sprayed in the process. I practically went over it with a magnifying glass to make sure that it was perfect. There was now growling under their breath and they had done an impeccable job as usual.
I would have absolutely no qualms about recommending them to anyone and I usually hesitate at recommending people because I feel my reputation is at stake when I do so. They are a fantastic group of guys that do an amazing job with extreme attention to detail.

had a drop leaf table refinshed. they did a beautiful, job and was not too too pricey. 4176 N. Elston Avenue, Chicago, IL 60 618
Phone: 773−545−6666 Email:

0 stars actually, if that was possible.
I needed some repair done on some dog scratches on my wooden front door. I saw this place had one good review, so I decided to try them out. I called Moises, and he said, sure, email over some pictures and I’ll give you an estimate and set something up.
A week passes with no response, so I called them. Of course, he was just looking at the pictures and was going to call me — what a coincidence! We set up an appointment on Friday morning.
I took the morning off on Friday and waited… and waited… and waited. Finally, I called and was told sorry, the repair guy is out at another appointment right now — can you reschedule? Against my better judgment, I said fine, let’s reschedule for Saturday at noon.
Saturday at noon… guess who never shows up? Are you kidding me? I’m sure they do good repair work… if they ever manage to make it out to their scheduled appointments. GTFO, Stripp Joynt.

For the wood windows, we used Moises and crew at The Stripp Joynt in Chicago. It’s a family business and it’s been around forever, even though they have switched locations a few times.
They are delightful to work with and they can do it all. Wood stripping, repair, painting, varnishing, the works. Need a door stripped? Great-grandma’s table has a deep scratch? The finish on your mid-​century modern credenza is worn? Need 52 window sashes stripped down while breaking a minimum of glass window panes in the process? Take them to the Stripp Joynt.
Many of their clients will bring furniture pieces in to them straight from a scavenging trip in Chicago’s bountiful alleys. The folks at the Stripp Joynt then turn back the clock on these pieces and clean them up.
They also install new wood floors!
They are good folks. They are careful and reasonably priced for the quality of work that they do. If you need a very quick turnaround, you may need to clear that with Moises beforehand. They have a lot of work from those of us who use their services.
On weekends, you can hear the guys play in their extremely popular band, Los Kapsi! This is one talented family.