|
I had my
first exposure to tools before the age of five.
Despite living in a three room apartment in N.Y. City,
my father had a workshop. He rented extra space in the
basement and our family was the first on the block to
own a Shopsmith™. Dad was always inventing and
building prototypes of his inventions like, butterfly
tables, geodesic dome screen houses and picture frames
that allowed art or photographs to be changed daily. I
heard my father talk about Buckminster Fuller, Frank
Lloyd Wright, and the Bauhaus school of design. I also
heard him talk about being your own boss by owning a
business.
In 1977 at
the age of twenty-four I went to the town hall in
Chelmsford, MA and registered my business name,
Village House Surgeon. Since then I have experimented
with various adjuncts to the core carpentry services
we provide. During the 1980’s I added Home Inspecting
at a time when most people had never heard of the
idea. Several years later I created a call-in radio
talk show called House Calls. Each week the show
tackled a different home related maintenance issue. A
local newspaper syndicate heard about the show and
asked me to write a weekly question and answer column
based on the radio show callers’ questions. You can
read excerpts from the House Calls columns on page two
of this web site.
After
performing over 1,500 home inspections, 104 radio
shows and writing two years of columns, I found it
hard to also run my carpentry business. Something had
to go. At the turn of the century I hired an
assistant, Dean Cullen, and we now focus entirely on
home repair and remodeling projects.
If you have
ever tried to call a large contractor for a relatively
small job (like replacing a damaged sill under your
front door or installing a slider to your patio) you
may have suffered the same frustrations many of my
customers tell me about. “I called everyone in the phone
book and you’re the only one who called me
back,”
or,
“I waited all morning for two other
contractors but you’re
the only one who showed up.” Big
contractors only want small jobs when they have no
other work or if your small repair is part of a larger
addition.
With
Dean’s help, I have focused my business on a niche
market that is smaller than what the “Big Boys” want
to do, but more than the lone Handyman can handle. For
more details on the types of projects we can help you
with see page 5 of this web site,
SPECIALTIES OF THE HOUSE or give me a
call @ 978-250-1445. Even if I can’t help you, I will always
call you back! That is a
promise.
| 
