The list on your fridge door.

Eleven small things that have been on it since March. We come out for half an hour minimum at £28, and we would rather do six little jobs in a morning than one big one.

This week — Thursday morning and Friday all day

the three that come out of the van most mornings — drawn, not photographed

Minimum charge: £28, half an hour
After that: £52 an hour
Call-out fee: none
Jobs last year: 612
Telephone: 0161 496 0877

What it costs

Half an hour is a real booking

Most people apologise on the phone for the job being too small. It is not. Small jobs in a batch are the best morning we have, and they are what this firm is for.

Pike & Co £28 first half hour £52 an hour thereafter No call-out fee

Typical jobWhat it involvesRate

Shelf or mirror up Found, levelled and fixed into whatever the wall actually is — plasterboard, brick or dot-and-dab, which is the bit that decides whether it stays up. £28

Dripping tap New washer or cartridge. If the valve body has gone we will tell you rather than fit a new tap you did not ask for. £28–45

Door that sticks Eased, hinges packed or the latch realigned. Ten minutes nine times out of ten, and it has usually annoyed somebody for two years. £28

Flat-pack, one unit Built, squared and fixed to the wall if it is tall enough to need it. Boxes and polystyrene taken away. £52

A morning of small things Four hours, as many jobs off the list as fit. This is what most people ask for and it is much the best value. £190

Rate card 02 Reddish · Heaton Chapel · Levenshulme · Denton Top copy — yours Signed on the day

Your list

Tick what is on yours

Eight things that turn up on most fridge doors, drawn to scale against the half hours we bill in. We round up to the half hour, never the hour.

Eight things off most fridge doorsMinutes

re-hang a door 40 bleed radiators × 4 25 silicone round a bath 45 fit a shelf 30 replace a toilet seat 15 change a light fitting 30 adjust two cupboard doors 20 fix a dripping tap 30

tick what’s on yours — we’ll add it up when you ring

The honest bit

What we will not touch

Written down, because the damage a handyman does is almost always to something he should have said no to.

A handyman is not a licence to do everything. There are trades where getting it wrong is dangerous rather than annoying, and the difference between a good one and a bad one is mostly whether he knows where that line is.

So the six below are the work we turn down, every time, including when you offer to pay more. Most of it is not that we could not manage it — it is that it is somebody else's registration on the line, and it should be.

Not us, ever — and whose registration each one is

Gas Safe Anything on gas. It is illegal for us, and rightly so.
Part P Consumer units, new circuits, anything notifiable.
Structural engineer Removing a wall, or anything holding the house up.
Roofer Roofs, gutters above one storey, or a ladder in wind.
Licensed removal Asbestos, of any kind, in any condition.
Surveyor Damp, until somebody has found out why it is wet.

Who turns up

Gareth, and sometimes Tom

Pike & Co is Gareth Pike, twenty-two years a joiner before his knees decided otherwise, and his nephew Tom on Thursdays and Fridays. Nobody else has our van and nobody else answers our phone.

We are DBS checked and insured to five million, and you are welcome to see both before we come. Quite a lot of our work is for people living on their own, and we would rather you asked.

Shoes off or covers on, dust sheets down for anything that makes a mess, and the old parts and packaging leave with us. It is a low bar and it is astonishing how often it gets cleared by nobody.

Signed for by

People: Gareth Pike, plus Tom on Thursdays and Fridays
DBS checked: Both, on request
Public liability: £5m
Trading since: 2019 →
Jobs last year: 612
Average job: 41 minutes

122 × 5, and two more. 612 jobs last year, counted the way the van counts them.

Start here

Send the whole list

All of it, including the daft ones. We will tell you what we can do, what we cannot, and roughly how long the lot will take.

Ring or text — 0161 496 0877. If we are under a sink we will text back.

A photograph is worth ten minutes on the phone, so send one if the job is hard to describe. Most people underestimate how many things are on their list until they write them all down.

And if it turns out to be a ten-minute job, we will say so and charge you the half hour, not invent an hour’s worth of reasons.