My first job through Checkatrade was not the one I expected. No taps, no tiles — a very large, very heavy oak desk that needed to come out of an upstairs bedroom.
It had been built properly, which was the problem. Glued and screwed, and clearly assembled in the room it was sitting in. There was no angle that got it through the bedroom door in one piece, let alone round the turn at the top of the stairs. Furniture like that gets built where it lands and nobody thinks about the day it has to leave.
So it came apart, and where it would not come apart it got cut — in the places that did the least damage, in case any of it was worth keeping. Then down the stairs in pieces, out to the customer’s car, stacked so it would actually fit, and off to the recycling centre.
The old desk went to the tip and a new one went up in its place, which is how the job finished: one piece of furniture out in bits, another built where it was going to live.
Not a glamorous first job. But it is a good example of the sort of thing people actually need doing and cannot do on their own: too heavy for one person, too awkward for two, and needing someone willing to take a saw to a nice piece of oak when there is no other way down.
I spent most of my career fitting bathrooms. These days I do general handyman and installation work instead — the jobs on the list that never quite get done — and Checkatrade is one of the ways people find me.
If you have something heavy, awkward, or stuck where it should not be, give me a ring on 07723 966130.
