Handyman in Rome, Georgia, by neighborhood

Repairs by part of town

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

Between the Rivers

Rome's oldest streets, out on the point with the Etowah and the Oostanaula on three sides of them. Nineteenth and early twentieth century almost all the way through. What that means on site: plaster and lath behind the paint, sash windows with cords and weights, porch columns and bracket work in profiles no yard stocks, and settlement cracks that keep reopening in the same corner because the house is still moving. Matching beats replacing here, and the historic commission reviews exterior changes.

East Rome and Oakdene

The streets inside Walnut Avenue and Turner McCall, with a commercial pocket where East Eighth meets Second Avenue and brick storefronts along Maple Avenue by the railroad. The housing runs Craftsman bungalow and Colonial Revival more than high Victorian, which changes the work: deep front porches carrying their own roof loads, exposed rafter tails and knee braces that rot from the end grain in, tapered porch columns on brick piers, and wide eaves that are the first thing to go when a gutter has been overflowing for a few seasons.

West Rome / Coosa side

Lower ground, closer to the water than the hills east of it. Damp crawlspaces, downspouts that need carrying well away from the foundation, and deck posts sitting near grade are the recurring items on this side.

College Heights and the Shorter Avenue side

College Heights sits south of the eastern end of Shorter Avenue, laid out on curving tree-lined streets from about 1911, after Shorter College moved off its downtown hill. It was Rome's first neighborhood planned around the automobile, which is why the streets curve and the houses sit back off them. Craftsman bungalows and Tudor Revival dominate, and both come with the same list: heavy timber porch work, real wood windows, and interior trim and casing profiles worth repairing, not tearing out. The canopy that makes these streets is also what fills the gutters.

North Rome, Mount Berry and the Armuchee side

North of the city the ground rises toward the Armuchee ridges, and Berry College's woods, Lavender Mountain included, fill most of the gap between Rome and Armuchee proper. This is the wooded end of town: bigger lots, longer drives, and canopy over most of the roofs. Gutters fill with needles and leaf litter far faster than they do on a downtown lot, and the soffit, fascia and rake boards behind them are usually soft by the time anyone thinks to look up.

Why being based in Rome matters

This is home. The truck is in Rome, the material runs are to Rome yards, and the drive to a job Between the Rivers or out past Shorter Avenue is measured in minutes. That matters for punch-list work more than it does for one big job: when a repair turns out to need a part nobody carries, going and getting it costs an hour, not the rest of the day.

What Rome 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.

• Doors that stopped latching, plus the six other things you have stopped noticing. In the older districts the doors are original and the frames have been moving for a hundred years. The screws in the top hinge lose their bite in soft old wood, the leaf drops a quarter inch, and the latch misses the strike. Planing the door is the wrong fix. Pulling the hinge back into solid wood is usually the right one. Door repair and the rest of the list.
• Cracks that come back in the same corner. Houses on these hills keep moving, so the crack over a door head is movement, not damage. Filling it again gets you the same line. What works is opening it out, taping across the joint so the patch can carry a little travel, and accepting that on plaster and lath the honest repair is often a skim of the whole wall rather than a spot. Drywall and plaster repair and the repaint that follows.
• Gutters that overflow, and the fascia paying for it. Under canopy the trough fills, water runs behind the gutter instead of through it, and the fascia and soffit take it every storm. By the time paint is peeling on the eave the wood behind it has usually been wet for two or three years. Cleaning it is the quick part. Replacing what has gone soft, before the rafter tails start, is the part worth doing. Gutter cleaning and repair and soffit and fascia carpentry.
• Decks and porches built out over falling ground. Built across seven hills, Rome has plenty of houses where the back door sits four or five feet above the yard and a deck carries the difference. Posts set straight into soil rot at the line where wet meets air. The ledger where the deck meets the house is where water gets behind the siding. Both are worth looking at before a handrail starts feeling loose. Deck building and repair and structural carpentry.
• A television going onto a wall that is not drywall. In Between the Rivers and the older East Rome streets the wall is plaster over wood lath, and lath will not hold a bracket. Neither will an old chimney breast without the right masonry anchor. The mount has to find the studs behind the plaster, which means locating them properly instead of trusting a magnet, and the patching afterward is plaster work. TV mounting and wall repair.

Every service, across Rome

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