＋Is a deck or pergola licensed work, and does the concreting come with it?
Both are carpentry, and the footings usually come with them. The Regulation's description of the carpentry category expressly includes "concreting for footings or structural support associated with outdoor construction (for example, pergolas, timber decks, timber and metal fencing and the like)", so a carpenter's licence reaches the structural concrete that holds the structure up. What it does not reach is "concrete paths and slabs, which are works within the category of general concreting" — so a deck plus a new path is two categories, not one. Licensing bites once labour and materials on the contract pass $5,000, and the contract is read as a whole rather than sliced into parts.
＋Carpentry or joinery — which category should be on the licence for built-in wardrobes?
Joinery. The Regulation defines that category as making and installing non-structural timber, timber composite or metal components for buildings, and names "furniture that is made to measure and fixed to a dwelling (such as built-in cupboards, wardrobes, entertainment units and the like), and which may be made off site and installed as a completed unit". Shower screens and internal timber cladding of walls and ceilings are listed as examples of the same category. Carpentry, by contrast, is on-site work erecting framing and fixing stairs, windows, doors, wallboards and floors. If a job involves both — a wardrobe inside a newly framed room — the licence needs to cover both, or the second part has to be subcontracted to someone whose licence does.
＋Six years or two — which warranty period covers carpentry?
It depends on what failed, not on which trade did it. The Home Building Act 1989 sets six years for a breach resulting in a major defect and two years for any other breach, both running from completion of the work, and s 18G stops either being contracted out of. A major defect requires a defect in a major element — the Act defines that as an internal or external load-bearing component essential to the stability of the building or any part of it, naming foundations and footings, floors, walls, roofs, columns and beams, and separately fire safety systems and waterproofing — that makes the building uninhabitable, destroys it, or threatens collapse. Structural carpentry can reach that definition; a made-to-measure wardrobe, which the Regulation defines as non-structural, generally will not.
＋The quote covers framing and the floor — who does the plasterboard?
Not the carpenter, on the Regulation's own wording. The carpentry category covers fixing "components or assemblies used in construction work such as stairs, windows, doors, wallboards (excluding plaster boards which is dry plastering) and floors" — the exclusion is written into the description. Dry plastering is its own trade category in the same list. This matters mainly for who carries which licence and who is responsible if something fails later; it is normal for one contractor to hold the head contract and subcontract the rest, but the subcontractor still needs the licence for their own category once the contract passes the threshold.
＋Why do the prices above stop at a few hundred dollars when a deck costs thousands?
Because the two are different rows of data, and mixing them would flatter both. The marketplace bands above aggregate small, single-visit jobs — a door hung, boards replaced, a frame repaired — which is where most of the local sample sits. Deck builds are broken out into their own line from the individual completed tasks, because three observed builds is not a distribution and should not be averaged into a band drawn from 76 maintenance jobs. Larger structural carpentry inside a renovation contract is priced as part of that contract rather than per trade, so it does not appear on a marketplace at all, and no Central Coast source publishing rates for it could be verified this session.