Los Angeles County, California
Home repair advice for older Los Angeles houses
Los Angeles housing is its own problem set. Plaster over wood lath, decades of settling, a rain season that arrives in three bursts, and a fixture that has been quietly leaking since the last owner. These are the things that come up often enough to be worth writing down.
The price in writingAgreed before anything is scheduled
One visit, several jobsThe drive costs the same either way
No surprise when we arriveThe number holds unless the wall says otherwise
Across Los Angeles CountyFrom the Valley to the South Bay
From the tools down
What we have written about working on LA houses
The things that come up often enough to be worth writing down, and the details that decide what a job costs here.
August 26, 2026
Reasons your ceiling fan wobbles and when it's safe to fix yourself
Most wobbles are loose screws or a blade out of balance. Here is how to tell which, and when the box in the ceiling is the real problem.
August 26, 2026
How to tell if your window screen needs repair or full replacement
A small hole or loose spline is a repair. A rusted, cracked or racked frame is a new screen. Here is how to tell the difference in a few minutes.
August 26, 2026
Why your hollow-core door won't latch and how to fix it
It is nearly always a hinge, a strike plate, a warped door or a frame that moved. Here is how to tell which, and what fixes each one.
Why we write these
Most of what goes wrong in a house here is specific to here. A wall that is plaster over lath behaves nothing like drywall when you put a bracket in it. A gutter fills with jacaranda and eucalyptus litter instead of fall leaves, and it fills all year. A door that catches has usually been fine for sixty years while the opening around it moved. Knowing which of those you are looking at is most of the job.
So these are written the way we would explain it standing in your hallway. What the thing is, what decides whether it is a small fix or a real one, and roughly what it costs in this county. If a piece saves you a service call, it did its job.
Where we work
Across Los Angeles County
What the walls are made of changes street by street in this city, and it changes the job.
Send us the list
However long it is. You get a price for the visit before anything is booked.