Handyman in Lakewood, Colorado

Lakewood is home base. I live and work here, which means most Lakewood calls are a short drive and scheduling is easier than anywhere else I cover. It also means I've worked on a lot of the housing stock in this city and know its habits — which is worth more than it sounds when you're diagnosing why a door has started sticking or a crack keeps reopening.

The city runs a wide range of construction eras, and each brings its own recurring problems. Postwar ranches with original single-pane windows and doors that have shifted with the frame. Seventies and eighties two-stories in Green Mountain where the popped nails and ceiling seam cracks show up on a predictable schedule. Newer Belmar and Solterra builds where the issues are hardware and fixtures rather than structure.

Lakewood's housing stock spans about seventy years. Postwar ranches on crawl spaces around Eiber and Morse Park, larger seventies and eighties two-stories in Green Mountain and Bear Creek Village, townhome and condo communities in and around Belmar, and newer infill toward Edgewater and Solterra. Many neighborhoods are HOA-controlled, which matters mostly for exterior work — fences, decks, and anything visible from the street often need board approval before the work starts.