Home Maintenance & Punch Lists in Apex, NC

Why a list costs less than a job

The most useful thing we can tell anyone about small repairs is arithmetic.

One small job costs the minimum. Getting there, parking, carrying tools in, doing ten minutes of work and leaving, has a cost that does not depend much on how long the work itself takes.

The second job on the same visit costs almost nothing but its own time. So does the third, and the ninth.

That is the entire reason we push people to bundle, and it is why a house with twelve small annoyances is far better served by one booking than by twelve.

Almost nobody has one thing wrong with their house. They have one thing that finally annoyed them enough to pick up the phone, and eleven others they have stopped noticing.

Writing the list

The exercise is worth fifteen minutes.

Walk the house with a pencil, room by room. Do not filter. Write down anything that is not right, however small and however long you have lived with it.

Include the things you have adapted to. The door you close with a hip. The drawer you have to lift. The light switch nobody uses because it does not do anything obvious. Those are all real items and most people have stopped seeing them.

Look up and look down. Ceilings, high fittings, skirting, thresholds. The two planes people never inspect.

Use a torch held flat against the wall. Light raking across a surface shows nail pops, dents and cracks that are invisible looking straight on. It is how we would survey it and it takes two minutes per room.

Go outside. Gate, fence, exterior fittings, hose bib, the trim by the front door, the caulk around a window.

Include the garage and the attic hatch. Both are ignored on principle.

What typically ends up on one

From actual lists, in rough order of frequency:

• A door that sticks, or one that will not latch
• A running or slow-filling toilet
• A dripping faucet
• Holes where something used to hang
• A loose handle, hinge or towel rail
• A light fixture nobody has got round to changing
• A smoke alarm chirping at four in the morning
• Caulk that has split around a bath or a window
• A cracked or loose tile
• A gate that drags
• Shelving that has sagged
• A cabinet door out of alignment
• Trim damaged by a vacuum cleaner
• An exterior light that stays on all day

None of those is worth a visit by itself. All of them together is a good half day, and the house feels noticeably different afterwards.

Seasonal maintenance

The other half of this service, and it is worth doing on a rhythm rather than when something fails.

Twice a year is enough for most houses: once in spring, once in autumn.

Spring is the exterior check — caulk joints, exterior paint on the sun-facing elevations, deck and railing fixings, the fence posts, gutters after the pollen.

Autumn is the weather check — weatherstripping and door thresholds, gutters after the leaves, exterior faucets before a freeze, and the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

Both are a good moment to run the punch list, since we are there anyway.

Holiday decorating

Worth mentioning because people are surprised it is on the list.

Putting up and taking down holiday lighting is exactly the kind of job that is straightforward at ground level and genuinely awkward at roofline height, particularly on a two-storey house.

The things worth getting right: fixings that do not damage the fascia or the shingles, a power arrangement that is rated for outdoor use with a proper outdoor cord and a timer, and — the part everybody forgets when booking — taking them down again in January.

Booking both at the same time is the sensible way to do it.

What we do not do

Anything requiring a permit, anything structural, roof work, licensed electrical and plumbing work beyond fixture and valve replacement, and the categories listed on our services page.

If something on your list falls outside what we take on, we will tell you at the quote and say who it belongs to. Knowing where somebody stops is worth more than a list of everything they claim to do.

Being local

Apex is where we are based, so there is no travel time built into what we quote here, and a shorter list is more viable than it would be at the far end of our area. It also means a half-day list can usually be fitted into a week rather than a month.

Getting a price

Send the list as a numbered list, with a photograph of anything that needs one. Most punch lists can be priced from that without a visit, and where something is unclear we would rather ask than guess.