By Steve Boriss Fix St Louis • Outside 0 Comments

Baby, there’s mold outside

Is it just me or does it seem like, all of a sudden, America is now eliminating more music than it’s producing? In the past few weeks, Michael Jackson has been pulled from playlists, a professional hockey team BOTH banned Kate Smith’s “God Bless America” AND hauled her statue away, and the popular song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” took a great deal of heat.

Thankfully for now, Fix St Louis has managed to stay under the radar. Our cult hit “Baby, There’s Mold Outside” has yet to be targeted for being offensive to Fungi-Americans. So while I’ve got the chance, let me tell you what you can learn from this educational little number.

Go outside and look at the siding on your house. Do you see areas where’s it’s covered with a grayish, maybe even greenish coating of dirt and/or slime? No? Then figure out which way is north, and go to THAT side of your house. See it now? It’s probably some kind of mold, or another member of the fungus family.

Fix St Louis can powerwash that dirt and slime away, a process that blasts your siding with 3,000-4,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, 2-3 gallons of water per minute, and vegetation-safe cleanser. The difference in how clean and bright their houses look is always a lot more dramatic than homeowners expect.

Have you ever thought maybe someday you’d buy a pressure washer yourself, so it would always be available? Well, all we can tell you is what we at Fix St Louis see among homeowners who have had that dream. Generally, the units they bought are less than half as powerful as our equipment, since they are never serviced they often don’t operate at all, they aren’t used with ladders and wands to handle the upstairs siding on the house, and they just add to the clutter in the garage.

Oh, and did I mention that they were only used once, then never again? If MC Hammer were a handyman instead of a rock star, he’d taunt them by pointing at their houses singing “Can’t Wash This.”

So, call us at Fix St Louis to powerwash your house until it’s bright and shiny. To paraphrase another group that chose to be rock stars instead of handymen, all in all it’s just some ick on your walls.

Dr Steve
Fix St Louis
314-434-4100

By Steve Boriss Fix St Louis • Doors & Windows • Outside • Uncategorized 0 Comments

Was your front entrance super-creepy BEFORE the Halloween decorations went up?

For many homeowners, Halloween serves as a once-a-year reminder of a couple of things. First, that they actually HAVE neighbors (and strangely, every one of them seems to have kids). And second, that they HAVE a front door. The rest of the year they enter through the garage, and would never think to ANSWER the door because it might be an axe murderer.

So, it’s not surprising that by the time Halloween rolls around, their front entrances show the same level of neglect, and about as much charm, as an abandoned haunted house. Fortunately, there’s Fix St Louis, and we can exorcise many of the disrepair demons that might scare away small children.

  1. Doorbells – Let’s start with the most basic Halloween need – a doorbell for trick-or-treaters to ring. As someone who spends his days wandering subdivisions and visiting homes, based on my daily unscientific sample, I swear nearly half of homeowners have doorbells that do not work. Many even have a hole at the place you should put your finger, sometimes making me wonder if it’s not some sick plot to administer a lethal electric shock to unwelcome solicitors. Fix St Louis can fix or replace your doorbell. We can even install one of those fancy new “RING” doorbells that sends an image of the button-pusher to your cell phone, so you can make an informed decision on whether or not this person actually IS an axe murderer.
  2. Outdoor Lighting – Many people still have their house’s original tinny wall lanterns at their front doors, and inelegant lamp posts in their yards. Are yours rusty, dusty, and only come on (if they come on at all) when you flip an inside light switch, which you never do? Replacement lights are surprisingly inexpensive and often come with dusk-to-dawn sensors so they function like they should – on when it’s dark, off when it’s light – without you ever having to think about it.
  3. Wood Rot – Look down – at the bottom of the white trim around your front door, and at the base of your porch columns. Are they rotted? Fix St Louis can fix that.
  4. Front Porch Floor and Walkway – Cracks in your front porch concrete floor? Have your sidewalk slabs shifted like leaning tombstones in an old graveyard, so they no longer line-up and have created trip hazards? Has the concrete step up to your front porch sunk so much that you have to put a little spring in your step to reach the porch, creating yet another trip hazard? These are all fixable.
  5. Holiday Decoration Lighting – Do you have electrical outlets on the front of your house for plugging in holiday lighting? Or do you end up with a bunch of extension cords strung throughout your porch and yard, then poking into a slightly opened door or window? Fix St Louis can clean this all up by adding outlets on the outside of your house, your porch, and your yard.

So this Halloween, make those costumed (or real) little monsters and their parents feel welcome at your door. Or at the very least, prevent them from talking about your house as THAT house, where the people must be cranky, penniless, and lonely hermits who don’t keep their house up. Let’s face it – for better or worse, you’ve got neighbors, and you’ve got a front door. You might as well make the best of it.

Dr Steve
Fix St Louis
314-434-4100

By Steve Boriss Fix St Louis • Bathrooms • Doors & Windows • Outside 0 Comments

You want privacy?
See us, not Mark Zuckerberg

Is it my imagination, or did millions of Americans just update their “Facebook Status” to “Demand Privacy,” after years of telling anyone who would listen how much more exciting their lives were than yours? No wonder Mark Zuckerberg had that deer-in-the-headlights look in front of Congress.

Fortunately, we at Fix St Louis are not Mark Zuckerberg, because OUR “community” of home-owning folks acts a whole lot more rationally. It’s true many of you live in homes with unfortunate “HELLO WORLD!!” features, if you know what I mean. Flaws that allow total strangers to publicly view what really should be private moments of indecent exposure, intimacy, or any other activity that should stay in Vegas. But once they realize something can be done about it, they run to Fix St Louis who will fix it, rather than Congress, who will just blather on and use it to raise campaign money.

Here are the 3 areas for increased privacy our customers request most:

  1. Front Doors– Some believe homebuilders must be the creepiest people on Earth, at least those who design front doors like they’re the windows at Macy’s Department Store. What’s with all this clear glass that allows strangers knocking on your door to get a better view than Peeping Toms would at your windows, without even looking like they’re doing anything wrong? Fix St Louiscan replace your doors with those with solid panels and obscured (non-see-through) frosted or textured glass. We can also help you with those new RING doorbells that allow you to view the person at your door from your smartphone, and maybe even pretend you’re not even there.
  2. Bathrooms– It’s common for bathrooms to have windows with non-see-through glass, but it’s not universal. For instance, we’ve seen plenty of homes with huge picture windows made of clear glass DIRECTLY ABOVE BATHTUBS with neighbor’s windows WITHIN SIGHT! We can help by installing blinds, curtains, or replacing the clear glass.
  3. Privacy Fences– If you don’t want your neighbors to watch your backyard life, you can install a so-called “privacy fence” – a fence made of wood or vinyl that has no gaps between its pickets and rises at least 6′ off the ground. The dirty little secret is that most people want these fences not for their OWN privacy, but so they don’t have to look at what their NEIGHBOR’S yard looks like!

Hey, you’re all grown-up now, and you made it! You’re living in a HOUSE. Not your parent’s basement, or some dorm, commune, hostel, or refugee camp. You’ve EARNED your privacy. Let Fix St Louis help you keep it.

Dr Steve
Fix St Louis
314-434-4100

By Steve Boriss Fix St Louis • Electrical • Outside 0 Comments

Our team of Dr Frankenstein’s can bring your front yard monsters to life

Whether it’s an encouraging sign of American innovation, or a distressing sign of cultural decay, there’s no question something has been happening lately to the great American front lawn.

Seems like overnight we jumped from bird baths, small statues of Mary, and an occasional pink flamingo to gigantic, holiday-themed, animated characters, with no noticeable regard for what might be considered “good taste.”

Maybe Fix St Louis shouldn’t be enabling these developments, but we’re guessing you’d rather listen to Martha Stewart than this humble handyman on matters of taste. So, whatever you need from us to realize your front yard dreams, no matter how provocative, questionable, or ambitious, we’re in.

Think of Fix St Louis as the folks who can make the things in your front yard light up, move, or make noise. We can make that dragon flap its wings, get that skeleton to sit up and lie down while its coffin door opens and shuts, get a cackle out of that flying witch, and cast an eerie glow from anything anywhere.

We can make all this happen by installing new, weather-proof electrical outlets wherever you actually need them, rather than where they happen to be now. We can even install timers and dusk-to-dawn sensors so you can set-up decorations once, then leave them alone, without adding tasks to your daily to-do list.

Wouldn’t it be more convenient to have an outlet in your flower beds? Or on the side of a porch column right near the lawn? Or on your front wall? Or even on the ceiling of your front porch for Christmas lights and other hanging decorations? Sure beats buying & storing long cords, then stringing these trip-hazards throughout your yard, across your porch, then through a window or door you must now keep open to plug-in the wire inside.

Hey, don’t blame us. We didn’t create this monster, even though we’re willing to feed it. We’ll let you and Martha fight it out.

Dr Steve
Fix St Louis
314-434-4100

By Steve Boriss Fix St Louis • Outside 0 Comments

Next on Deck: Re-seal or Replace?

While the climate in our nation’s capital has been harsh this winter, our weather has been relatively mild. Many St Louisans are already venturing out onto their decks.

Unfortunately, many don’t like what they see. Rotted boards, washed-out stain, boards with cracks, wobbly rails, and a general sense that their decks are just yucky.

So, what can be done about your deck? Get it repaired? Re-stained? Replaced?

The good news is this: If you like your deck, you can keep your deck. You don’t have to tear it down a build a new one. That’s because Fix St Louis can:

  • Replace rotted floor boards, stairs, rails, joists, fascia, ledger boards, and every other part of a deck’s anatomy.
  • Replace all your floor boards with no-maintenance composite boards that will look great now, and will look just as great 10 years from now.
  • Repair or replace failing posts and the concrete piers they sit on, or at least should be sitting on if they were built right in the first place.
  • Stop leaks from your deck into the side of your house caused by missing or damaged flashing.
  • Powerwash and stain your deck – only this time with Sherwin Williams elastomeric coating which looks terrific, fills cracks, and turns staining your deck from an ongoing chore into something you’d only do as often as painting your house.

This season, make a pledge that you won’t be a do-nothing household. You’ve got the power, and Fix St Louis has the people, to make your deck great again!

Dr Steve
Fix St Louis
314-434-4100

By Steve Boriss Fix St Louis • Handyman • Outside • Uncategorized • • • • • • • 0 Comments

Feeling all insecure inside about your security lights outside?

It’s getting dark a bit earlier these days, ESPECIALLY now that daylight savings time is over. So now those lights on the sides of your house are even more important. But, we find that most homeowners are always feeling a little insecure about their security lights.  They’re never quite sure whether or not their outdoor lights are working, or even what makes them turn-on.

They can never seem to answer some basic questions. Is there a wall switch somewhere that needs to be turned on and, if so, is it possible someone turned it off? When was the last time I checked to see if all the bulbs were on? Are the lights supposed to go on when it gets dark? Or when someone moves in front of them? Or when it is both dark AND someone moves in front of them? Or maybe it’s on a timer? And maybe that timer wasn’t reset the last time we lost power.

In all fairness, it’s NOT that easy to check whether your outdoor lights are working. When you’re checking an inside light fixture all you have to do is flip a nearby switch and see it with your own eyes. But for outside lights, if there actually is a switch, it’s not nearby and it’s inside, so you’d have to go outside after flipping the switch. And then, during the day how do you check a light fixture that only comes on at night? And, just what wild and crazy motion do you have to perform in front of your motion-detecting light to get it to turn-on? And, what will your neighbors think when they see you doing it?

The fact is that dealing with outdoor light fixtures is not a natural do-it-yourself project. To add an outdoor light fixture, would you know how to run wires through your walls and ceilings, then through an outside wall? How would you know the power is off before you touch the wires? And, do you really want to do all this stuff while standing on a ladder?

You can make this all quite simple by letting our bright technicians at Fix St Louis be your guiding light. We can diagnose your lights, fix them, change bulbs, add new fixtures, and give you sound advice on which lights should be timed, motioned, dusk-to-dawned, or simply just switched.

Don’t keep your prowlers in the dark. Let Fix St Louis help you send them scurrying!