Some Jobs Around the House Are Just Matters of Detail

You can find plenty of telephone listings under "Auto Detailing." These firms specialize in making your car look new inside and out. Detailers rigorously clean, burnish, polish and make minor repairs.

But you won't find any Yellow Pages listings for "Home Detailing." That's potentially a large untapped market.

There are countless firms that renovate homes. Some remodel kitchens and bathrooms; some do electrical, mechanical or plumbing work; some repair or rebuild roofs; some replace windows; and some repaint inside and out. A few home-improvement display ads boast that "no job is too small."

In fact, many jobs are too small, and no home-improvement firms specialize in "detailing" as such. Few companies want to spend only a couple of days at someone's house performing a long list of often cosmetic tasks. Homeowners themselves could do some of that work, but it can be easy to defer or neglect such work when schedules get hectic.

The construction industry's fragmentation by specialty means that you might need members of several trades to fix every minor thing that cries for a bit of attention. Missing are firms or individuals whose business is devoted to performing those numerous and vexing but minor home tasks.

Should someone offer a home-detailing service, likely exterior tasks would include:

Caulking and cleaning windows.

Cleaning and repairing gutters and making minor roof repairs.

Sealing around windows, doors and other penetrations; straightening flashing; replacing missing shingles.

Securing loose or misaligned shutters, light fixtures or railings.

Cleaning portions of masonry walls and repairing minor masonry defects, such as crumbling or missing mortar, loose bricks or stones, and clogged weep holes.

The list of interior detailing needs could be extensive: