What do you want – a tradesman or a handyman?
Handyman Quotes
from local handymen
There are a plethora of fiddly little jobs around the house that need doing and that we’re not always confident of tackling ourselves. Cupboard doors that don’t quite shut properly, floorboards that creak, a crack in the wall where hanging a picture went wrong, the list is endless. In the good old days, our parents would have called up the local handyman, who made his living out of fixing these small tedious problems. Today things aren’t quite as straight forward.
There are less and less traditional handymen around these days and this can be attributed to many different factors. As we as a society move towards new professions there are less people working as traditional handymen. This has been exacerbated by the concerns about insurance and liability. No one wants to be sued if a worker gets hurt in their home, and we all feel safer taking on companies who’s employees are covered by their own indemnity policies. That’s before you take into consideration the issues of tax, licensing and protection for you as the homeowner if the work isn’t done well.
There was a time where the only way you could get anyone to work on your house was to have major remodelling work done. Everyone had so much work waiting for them that they could pick and chose the best jobs and just take on the ones that meant serious money. It was impossible to get anyone out to fix a shutter or replace a single board. The reason that people could afford these major works was that during the 80’s the massive leap in house prices meant people had a huge amount of equity in their properties which they could tap into to pay for the renovations. But now things are swinging back the other way; few people can afford to shell out for huge works and firms which would have sneered at a few odd jobs will jump at the chance to rehang your front door or replace a window.
One of the common misconceptions is that your local handyman will offer better rates than a bigger firm who’ll offer a specialist service. This isn’t always the case, but you can usually be sure that if you need a licence to do the work it will be more expensive than if you don't.
A handyman will regularly charge you a call out fee and a minimum hourly rate, so it’s often most cost effective to hire them if you have a range of small jobs that need doing around the house.
Read our tips on what to do before your hire a handyman or post a jobto find quality handymen today.
Handyman Quotes
from local handymen
