Small handyman jobs across Los Angeles County

This is the whole menu. If your job is on it, you’re in the right place, and two or three questions is usually all it takes. If it isn’t, keep reading. There’s a section below on what we don’t take on.

Walls, ceilings and hanging things

• Mounting and hanging. TVs, shelves, heavy mirrors, gallery walls, curtain rods and blinds. Older LA walls are often lath and plaster instead of drywall, which changes how it gets anchored. Say which you have when you get in touch.
• Drywall and ceilings. Doorknob holes, cracks, water stains, the mess left behind after a mount comes off the wall. Plaster repair in older homes too. That one is a different job, and we’ll tell you so before we start.
• Fans, lights and switches. Swapping a fixture, putting a fan where a light used to be, or replacing one that’s given up.
• Painting and touch-ups. A single room, a ceiling, touch-ups between tenants. Condo and apartment owners use this one constantly during turnover.

Doors, windows, floors and woodwork

• Doors. Houses settle, and a lot of LA housing has had decades to do it. Doors that stick, latches that don’t catch, hinges that sag, weatherstripping, or a new slab hung in an old frame.
• Windows and screens. Torn screens, sliding screen doors off their track, and windows painted shut.
• Floors and stairs. Squeaks, lifting boards, cracked tiles and worn treads.
• Carpentry and trim. Trim, baseboards, built-in shelving, cabinet doors that won’t close square, and fence and gate repair.

Around the house

• Faucets, toilets and disposals. Like-for-like swaps where the supply lines are already there. Clear, priceable work, so long as nothing behind the wall needs opening up.
• Furniture and assembly. Beds, dressers, desks, shelving units, and tall pieces anchored to the wall. Bring the box, skip the afternoon.
• Grab bars and home safety. Grab bars, stair rails, lever handles and smoke alarm swaps, fixed into real framing.
• Gutters and exterior. Rain season here runs October through March, so the useful time to book this is September, not the first wet week of November.

• Tell us what’s on the list. Pick the jobs off the menu and answer two or three questions. What it is, how many of them, and which part of the county you’re in. A TV bracket into lath and plaster is a different afternoon than the same bracket into drywall.
• Put the whole list in one visit. Small-job pricing almost always carries a minimum charge. The drive across the county and the setup cost the same whether the visit runs forty minutes or three hours. So the door that sticks and the shelf that came down are far cheaper handled in one afternoon than a month apart.
• You get a price before anything starts. What the job involves and what it costs, confirmed before a tool comes out. Nothing begins until you’ve heard a number. And if the job is bigger than it sounded, you hear that then, not in a larger invoice at the end.
• Some jobs get turned down. If what you describe is an electrician’s work, or a roofer’s, you’ll hear that up front instead of after we’ve driven out to look at it.

Most of what’s on the menu above costs well under $1,000. Mounting a TV, hanging a mirror, patching drywall, swapping a faucet, clearing gutters, assembling furniture. That is the small, low-cost end of the work the exemption is aimed at. Whether the exemption applies turns on the rest of its conditions, not on the job alone. The exemption is narrow, so it is a fair thing to ask about.

Once a job reaches $1,000, or needs a building permit, it needs a licensed contractor instead. Someone licensed for that work, at that trade’s rate.

Older, pre-war houses here are often plaster over wood lath, not drywall. That changes how things get anchored and what the job costs, so say which you have. More on plaster walls.

Say so if you rent, too. A bracket, a curtain rod, a shelf anchored into old plaster all leave holes a landlord will notice, and across the high-turnover parts of the county that is a deposit question as much as a repair question. Sometimes the better answer is a no-drill option, or a word with the building before anything gets drilled at all.

Saying no to things is more useful than claiming everything.

• Electrical beyond a fixture swap. New circuits, panel work, a rewire. That is a licensed electrician.
• Plumbing beyond a like-for-like swap. A re-pipe, a slab leak, anything opening up a wall. Licensed plumber.
• Roofing. Leaks, flashing, a re-roof. That is a roofer’s job.
• Structural work, permits, HVAC, tree work, whole-house repaints and remodels. All real trades, none of them a two-hour job.
• Sanding or disturbing paint in a home built before 1978. Lead paint rules apply, and a lot of LA housing is old enough for them, so this comes up often. It needs someone certified, not a handyman with a sander.

If your job is on that second list, tell us anyway. Saying which trade it is costs nothing and saves you a wasted afternoon.