Handyman Jobs

Have a look at your fridge door, or that note on your phone. There's nearly always a list. The towel rail that came off the wall, the flat-pack wardrobe still boxed up out the back, the gate that drags on the path, the shelf you've been meaning to put up since you moved in. None of it's a big job. That's the whole problem — it's too small for the bigger trades to bother with, and too fiddly to get around to yourself on a Sunday.

So that's what this is for. All Round Carpentry is a local, owner-run outfit, and the handyman side is built around clearing those lists in one hit. You deal with Dave, not a call centre. We cover the whole Illawarra — Helensburgh down through the Gong and Shellharbour to Kiama, and right down into the Shoalhaven and Nowra.

The jobs we get called for most

Some of it's the same week in, week out. Flat-pack assembly — IKEA, Bunnings, Kmart, all of it — built properly so the doors line up and the thing doesn't lean. Wall-mounted folding clotheslines too, fixed into something solid instead of just the plasterboard. That last bit matters more than people reckon once there's a wet load of washing hanging off it.

Then there's everything else:

• Shelving and storage — floating shelves, garage racking, a fit-out for the linen cupboard or under the stairs
• TV mounts on brick, fibro or stud walls, with the cables tidied so they're not dangling down the wall
• Gates, latches and hinges that have dropped or seized up
• Patch-ups and minor repairs — skirting, architraves, a sticking door, a section of rotten weatherboard

A lot of the older fibro and brick post-war places round here have had a few owners and a few rounds of dodgy patch jobs, so half the work is undoing someone else's shortcut. The newer estates are a different story. Thin internal walls, not much timber to fix into — so a heavy mirror or a big telly needs the right anchors or it'll pull straight back out of the wall.

Why one visit beats a callout for each job

The salt air down here is hard on fixings. Hinges, latches and outdoor screws go off a lot faster near the coast than they would a few hundred k's inland, so when we're out for the gate we'll usually cast an eye over the rest of the outdoor stuff while we're there. Same deal inside. If there's a list, we'll work down it and get through as much as we can in the one trip.

That's where the money's actually saved. A callout costs the same whether the job takes two minutes or two hours, so paying it once for six jobs beats paying it six times. Write everything down before we come — even the daft little stuff. Those two-minute jobs add up quick, and it's far better to knock them all over together than have me back next week for a single hook.

We turn up when we say we will, with the gear and the right fixings already on the ute, so there's no ducking off to the shops halfway through. Most lists are done inside a morning or an afternoon. And if something turns out bigger than it looked — that "small" leak that's really a rotted-out bit of frame — we'll tell you straight and work out what to do, rather than paper over it and leave you with the same problem in six months.

Local, licensed and easy to deal with

We're fully licensed and insured, and we live and work here, so we know what the Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama and Shoalhaven councils actually care about versus what's just a quick handyman fix. Most of this stuff needs no approvals at all. It's the sort of work you just want done well, and done once.

Got a list building up? Write it out, then give Dave a call on 0414 007 351 or grab a free quote. Tell us what you've got and we'll let you know what'll fit into a visit. No pressure either way — sometimes it's just good to know where you stand before you book anyone in.