Handyman in Mentone, Alabama

Repairs by part of town

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

The brow

The western edge of town, where the mountain stops and the valley floor is roughly seven hundred feet below. Houses out here are built onto rock ledge rather than set into soil, which is how a 1922 cottage on this brow came to be known as the Hanging Cottage. Building on a ledge makes its own list of problems. Piers and posts step down the rock at different heights, so nothing is a standard length and no two are the same. Porches and decks reach out toward the view, and the outboard end is the end there is no good way to stand a ladder against. Weather comes in from the west across open air with nothing to break it, so the brow side of a house takes rain with real force behind it, and the paint, the rail and the deck boards on that face give out years ahead of the same details around the back.

The village on Cutler Avenue

The center of town runs along Alabama 117, which is one of the main ways across Lookout Mountain and carries loaded trucks all day long. The buildings are old frame: the Mentone Inn from the 1920s, the log cabin shops, and the stone columns still standing where the Mentone Springs Hotel burned in 2014. Frame buildings of that age on a road with that much heavy traffic get shaken, and shaking shows up as joint failure rather than rot. Casings and trim open at the miters. Glazing putty cracks and drops out of sash windows. The same wall crack comes back over the same door head after every patch. Filling it again gets the same line back. What works is opening the joint out and repairing what is moving underneath it.

The Little River and the DeSoto side

East and south of the village the ground falls toward the West Fork of the Little River, which is unusual in that it runs across the top of the mountain rather than at the foot of one, and the roads follow it: River Road along the water, Scenic Highway heading south along the brow toward DeSoto State Park. This is the cabin and camp side. Buildings under heavy hardwood cover, close to water, and shut for months at a stretch. Canopy that thick fills a gutter twice a season, and the overflow goes down the back of the fascia where nobody is looking. Steps and walkways built out of wood onto uneven rock stay wet and grow a film that makes them slick well before they rot. And a building that has been closed since October is worth walking properly before the season rather than in June, when the first family through the door finds the problem instead.

What a Rome base means for Mentone

What Mentone 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.

Every service, across Mentone

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