- CREW 5
- CATEGORY pedestrian openings
- METHOD measure → specify → procure → fit
- OUTPUT written findings
Five people, one category
About Charlotte Commercial Doors
Measurement before specification, specification before procurement.
The premise
Most commercial door problems are procurement problems wearing a work jacket
The leaf was fine. The hardware was fine. The two of them had never met, and by the time anyone noticed there was a crew on site and a lead time in the way.
That observation is the whole business plan. The order of operations here is inverted compared to most of the trade: measurement first, specification second, procurement third, tools last.
Background
How it started
Wendell Ashby came into this from the supply side rather than the tools. He spent most of his working life writing hardware schedules and quoting hollow metal packages for a distributor serving general contractors across the Piedmont.
From that desk he watched the same failure repeat for years. A schedule written correctly in an office. A leaf ordered against a frame nobody had measured. A crew on site at seven in the morning trying to make two incompatible things fit, and a client being told it would be another four weeks.
He will tell you, unprompted, that most commercial door problems are procurement problems. Not skill problems, not product problems. Somebody ordered before somebody measured.
So the company got built around closing that gap, and everything else — the crew size, the survey-first process, the written schedules — follows from it.
What actually happens
What actually happens on a call
The first conversation is a triage, not an intake form read aloud. What the opening is, roughly what it measures, what it is doing now, and whether there is a label on it. Most of the time that is enough to establish whether you have a leaf job, an opening job, or something that belongs to a different trade entirely.
If it is ours, Grady walks it. Eleven things get recorded on every opening, including the measured size against the nominal size, the frame throat, the handing, the existing prep, the label, and the clear width against ADA 2010 Standards section 404.
Priya then writes the hardware set against how the space is actually used rather than against what happens to be on the door now, and it goes in front of you before anything is ordered.
Then, and only then, does anything get bought. Everything for an opening arrives before we start it, because a half-finished opening in an occupied building is worse than an unstarted one.
Standards we hold to
What we hold to
Measure before recommending
No quote leaves here based on a photograph.
The smaller invoice gets named first
When the right answer is keep the frame, adjust the closer, or call a repair contractor instead, you hear that answer first and unprompted.
No invented ratings
No star counts, no review numbers, no fabricated testimonials, and no AggregateRating markup. If you see a rating on a contractor's site with no platform behind it, ask where it came from.
No scope change without approval
In writing, before the work, with no surprise line items at the end.
We stay on our side of the licence line
Electrical work goes to licensed electrical trades, fire alarm interfaces to the alarm contractor. Said up front, not discovered later.
Sometimes the answer is a different professional
An architect, a fire protection engineer, or the authority having jurisdiction. We would rather tell you that than sell you a door.
The people
The five of us
Wendell Ashby
Owner, estimator and specification writer
Years on a distributor's supply side writing hardware schedules and quoting hollow metal packages for general contractors across the Piedmont. Handles estimating, scope and anything that involves reading a drawing against what a manufacturer will actually build.
Priya Raghunathan
Hardware scheduling
Learned schedules at a distributor's specification desk, reading architects' door schedules against what manufacturers would build. She is the reason function numbers, keying and prep get settled before anything is ordered.
Tobias Krenek
Frames and steel, install lead
Came up setting hollow metal in commercial shells and has spent a long time in masonry and drywall openings where the rough opening is never what the drawing said. Handles the frames nobody else wants — the ones going into an existing wall.
Adaeze Nwosu
Automatic operators and access control prep
Coordinates any opening that has to talk to something else: card readers, electric strikes, request-to-exit, operators tied to a building system. She does the door side and the coordination; licensed electrical work goes to the licensed trades.
Grady Pilcher
Field survey and measure
Does the walk-throughs. Measures the opening, records the handing, photographs the existing prep and reads the label if there is one, so that what gets ordered matches what is actually in the wall.
Coverage
Where the vans run
The city itself accounts for most of the workload — office stock through Uptown and South End, the older industrial buildings west of the centre, and the newer commercial corridors that have gone up around them.
Outside Charlotte the list runs to six: Concord and Harrisburg up in Cabarrus, Huntersville at the north end of Mecklenburg, Matthews on the southeast side, Indian Trail over in Union, and Fort Mill down across the line in York County.
It is a short list on purpose. Everything on it sits inside a drive that lets a surveyor and an install crew work the same corridor in a day. If you are just outside it, call anyway and you will get an honest answer about whether we can serve you properly.
Questions
How we operate
Are you licensed and insured?
Ask on the phone and you will be told exactly what is carried, with documentation to follow. We deliberately do not print licence or policy numbers on a website. Numbers on a page prove nothing and are trivially copied; what is verifiable is what can be handed to you on request.
How big is the company?
Five people, listed by name on this page. That is the whole of it. It caps how much work we can carry at once, which is a real constraint and one we would rather state than work around.
Do you subcontract?
Our own crew does the door work. Where a job needs a licensed electrician, a fire alarm contractor, a mason or a drywall trade, we bring them in and tell you who they are and what they are responsible for.
Why is there no showroom?
Because there is nothing useful to visit. This is a mobile trade contractor and the work happens at your opening. Publishing an address would mean publishing somewhere you cannot usefully go.
Why are there no credentials next to the names?
Roles describe what a person does, not what they are certified to do. Where a job requires a specific licence or certification we bring in someone who holds it and tell you who they are. Credential claims are easy to type and hard to verify.
What happens if something goes wrong after you leave?
Call us. Adjustments after installation are part of the job — closers in particular often want revisiting once a building has been through a temperature swing. Anything under a manufacturer's warranty we handle with the manufacturer on your behalf.
Do you do repairs?
Not as a line of business. Installation, replacement and compliance is the lane. For a repair to an opening that is fundamentally sound, a repair contractor will serve you better and cost you less, and we will say so.
Say what the opening is. We will tell you which line it falls under.
Describe the opening and you will get told which of the five lines it falls under, or which trade it belongs to instead.
- Commercial Door Installation
- Door Frame Replacement
- Commercial Door Hardware Installation
- ADA and Egress Door Compliance Upgrades
- Fire-Rated Door Replacement