Property CareHome › Repairs & maintenance
The whole list, taken seriously.
Home repairs and maintenance across Godmanchester, Huntingdon and the Cambridgeshire villages. Small improvements, lasting difference. Every home has a list of jobs that never quite reaches the top. The sticking door you have learned to shoulder. The tap that drips only at night. The banister that moves just enough to notice. And if you now work where you live, that sticking door is no longer occasional; it is a colleague. We work through the lot, properly, in a single visit wherever we can.
Typical jobs on the list
If it is part of how your home works day to day, it is our kind of job. A sample, not a limit:
- Locks changed, cylinders upgraded and sticking mechanisms adjusted
- Doors that stick, drop, squeak or will not latch
- Dripping taps, slow drains and running cisterns
- Failed or mouldy sealant around baths and showers
- Loose banisters, handles, hinges and catches
- Shelving, curtain poles, blinds, mirrors and pictures hung properly
- Flat-pack furniture assembled squarely, and made solid
- Draught-proofing around doors and windows
- Locks, latches and door furniture adjusted or replaced
- Cracked tiles, grout refreshed, small plaster repairs
- Gutters cleared, fence panels secured, gates re-hung
- Smoke alarm batteries, light bulbs at height, and other small kindnesses
- The odd job you assumed nobody would want: try us
We know our limits, and say so
What we do
General repairs, care and thoughtful improvements that do not require statutory registration: the everyday fabric of the home, done with care.
What we refer
Gas, boilers and flues belong with Gas Safe registered engineers. New circuits, consumer units and anything inside a bathroom belong with NICEIC or NAPIT registered electricians. Sockets, spurs, lights and switches on an existing circuit are not notifiable in England and we do those ourselves, with the minor works certificate. Always.
How we handle it
If your list needs a specialist, we tell you plainly and call on our network of trusted tradespeople: electrician, Gas Safe engineer, carpet fitter, tree surgeon and more, each one someone we would let loose on our own home. You still have only one conversation to manage.
Priced in writing, before we start
We do not charge by the hour, ever. Hourly billing rewards slowness and punishes tidiness, and it leaves you watching the clock instead of the work.
So you send us your list, ideally with a photo or two. Small and obvious things we can price from that. For anything larger, or where a photograph cannot show us what is behind it, we come and look first and then price it in writing. Everyday sundries such as filler, fixings and basic paints are already in that price; anything bought specifically for your job is itemised. The price does not move unless the scope does.
For a list of small jobs, we bundle them into a single visit at a single price, which is almost always better value than calling someone out three times. If we open something up and find more than expected, we stop, show you, and agree the way forward before any extra cost exists.
Small individual jobs typically run from £65 to £250. A half-day visit working through a list is usually £150 to £350, and a full day around £550. Every job is quoted in writing first, so these are orientation rather than promises.
These are starting points, not a menu. Combine them, split them, or ask for the one job you actually want. If that is a single curtain pole, send us that one line and a single curtain pole is all we will price.
Three more things
Some of it we will tell you to leave. A door that sticks in August and swings fine in February is doing what timber has always done. We will ease it if it irritates you, but it is not a fault, and you are not obliged to spend money on the weather. The same goes for hairline cracks that open and close with the seasons.
Nobody else's job is the whole room. The plumber leaves the tiles, the tiler leaves the paintwork, and the list you started with is still two-thirds long. We take the room rather than the trade, which is why one visit usually clears more than you expected.
The reasoning behind turning work down is set out at length in the Book of Care.
If the list keeps coming back. Some people work through a list once and never need us again. Others find a new one has quietly grown by the following spring, which is not a failure, it is just what houses do. If that is you, a care plan catches them at the small stage instead.
The list rebuilds itself
It takes about eighteen months. The door eases, the sealant goes, something starts dripping again, and slowly you are back where you started with a fresh list and the same reluctance to ring anybody about it.
So a good number of people who have us clear the list once ask us to come back before it can rebuild. That is the whole of what a care plan is: the same person, twice or four times a year, catching things while they are still the cheap version of themselves. From £45 a month, thirty days' notice, and no tie-in.
Plenty of people never want one, and that is a perfectly sensible answer too. Clearing the list once is a complete job on its own, and we will not raise it again.
Send us the list
However long, however small the jobs. A photo or two helps us quote accurately first time.