Handyman in Summerville, Georgia

Repairs by part of town

Summerville is not all one kind of house, and the repair work changes with it. See if you can find your own house in this.

Downtown, Commerce Street and the courthouse blocks

The old commercial blocks around Commerce Street and Georgia Avenue, with the granite-faced courthouse at the center and the Central of Georgia depot two short blocks east. The houses on the streets behind it are of that vintage, the 1896 Taylor House being the one everybody knows. Weatherboard siding, tall single-pane sashes, deep porches carrying real load. Work here is matching and repair, not replacement, because nothing on a house like that comes in a size you can buy off a shelf.

The slopes under Taylor Ridge

Summerville sits at the western base of Taylor Ridge, and houses tucked up under that cover collect everything the slope sheds, so gutters are full again a few weeks after they were cleared and the fascia and soffit behind them go soft while nobody is looking. Wind coming over the ridge is harder on siding ends, corner boards, gates and shutters than it is on the same house sitting a mile out on the valley floor.

Pennville and the north end

North of downtown, Pennville is where Howard Finster built Paradise Garden, off Rena Street at the dead end of Lewis. It is older frame housing for the most part, on ground running north toward Trion and the mills that carried that end of the county for a century. Frame houses of that age have usually been re-sided, re-roofed and added onto more than once. The useful thing on a first visit is working out which layer is actually failing, instead of patching the only one you can see from outside.

The valley floor and Town Creek

Down on the flat, the creek out of the downtown spring runs past the depot and Dick Dowdy Park, at Highway 27 and University Street, before it reaches the Chattooga River. Low ground beside a creek keeps a crawlspace damp the whole year, and a damp crawlspace announces itself as a floor with a little give in it long before it announces itself as a stain. The newer streets out this way bring an ordinary list instead: doors that stopped latching, decking gone soft, gutters.

What a Rome base means for Summerville

Summerville is under twenty miles up the valley from Rome, an ordinary run, not a long one. Getting there is not the question. How the day gets used is. A list of eight small jobs cleared in one visit is a better use of a trip than one latch, and we will say so instead of booking two visits.

What Summerville homes tend to need

A few repairs come up far more often than the rest here. None of them are dramatic. All of them get worse and more expensive if left.

• Gutters that are full again a month after clearing. Under the ridge the tree cover does not let up. A gutter that overflows twice a season keeps the fascia behind it wet enough to rot without ever looking wet from the ground. Clearing them does not cost much. What decides whether you do this again next year is the wood they are hung on. Gutter cleaning and repair and fascia and soffit carpentry.
• Wind coming over the ridge. Anything fixed at an edge takes it first: siding ends, corner boards, ridge caps, gates, shutters. Wind gets under a lifted edge and keeps working it, so the piece that finally fails is rarely the piece that first came loose. The repair is usually re-fixing a whole run properly rather than swapping one board. Siding and structural repairs.
• Porches on the old housing around the courthouse. On a house of that age the porch is structure, not decoration. The columns carry the roof, the beam carries the columns, and the whole thing stands on piers that have been settling since the 1890s. Rot at the base of a column is a structural finding. It gets looked at as one system, not as five separate items. Porch and structural repair.
• Damp low ground, and then a door that stops latching. The creek out of the downtown spring runs the length of the commercial blocks, and the ground either side of it stays wet. Joist ends and subfloor go soft years before anything shows on the surface. What gets noticed first is not a stain, it is a floor with give in it and a door in that room no longer meeting its strike. Subfloor repair and door repair.
• Decks built stepping down a grade. On sloping ground the posts are all different lengths, and the tall ones carry their load in a different way from the short ones. That is where movement starts. The ledger and the post bases are worth looking at before anyone starts talking about new boards, because new boards on a frame that is moving buy you a couple of seasons. Deck building and repair.

Every service, across Summerville

• Handyman & Home Repair in Summerville, the list you keep meaning to get to
• TV Mounting in Summerville, mounted into something that holds
• Drywall Repair in Summerville, patches that disappear
• Interior Painting in Summerville, the prep is the job
• Deck Building & Deck Repair in Summerville, the frame decides the job
• Siding & Structural Repairs in Summerville, repaired where it's sound, replaced where it isn't
• Door Repair & Installation in Summerville, doors that latch first time
• Gutter Cleaning & Repair in Summerville, clear gutters protect the fascia behind them
• Pressure Washing in Summerville, the right pressure for the surface
• LVP Flooring Installation in Summerville, the floor is only as flat as what is under it
• Screened Porches in Summerville, the part of the house you actually use
• Fence Installation & Repair in Summerville, the posts are the fence