Welcome to our first blog post. We get requests for a huge variety of handyman services. Yesterday was a fairly typical day. We had a call from a client who was planning on renting out their apartment while they were travelling overseas and wanted to ‘spruce up’ the place to make it attractive for prospective tenants. We were called in to install 2 sets of timber venetian blinds, install 3 floating shelf systems purchased from Bunnings and attaching a newly purchased hose reel to the outside garden wall.

Installing Venetian Blinds

The blinds were to be mounted above 2 windows in a bedroom. The walls were rendered brick walls. We carefully consulted with the client as to where they wanted the position of the blinds to be. We then unpacked the blinds and installed the blind mounting brackets onto the brick walls. This meant using a masonry drill bit to drill 6mm holes into the wall and then install ‘rawl’ plugs into those holes. We then screwed the brackets into those anchor points. Drilling into brick walls can sometimes be an easy job and at other times quite hard work! In this instance the walls were very solid but we succeeded with persistence! After mounting the brackets on the wall we installed the new blinds into those brackets, attached the valance and then attached a safety attachment which allows for securing the chords of the blinds (as a precaution to protect children from possibly getting entangled in them). We thoroughly then tested the operation of the blinds to ensure they opened and closed properly and could be raised and lowered as designed.

Installing A Hose Reel

Hose reel holders have really evolved over the last few years. We installed a very high tech hose reel holder that included a 360 degree swiveling base onto a timber clad wall. This involved ensuring the hose reel braket was screwed onto the timber battens where they met timber stud work to ensure strength of the installation. The hose reel holder and 20 metre hose weighed close to 20kg so the installation obviously needed to be sound.

Floating Shelf Installation

Floating shelves look great! You can only see the shelf on the wall with no brackets in sight. This gives a very modern, crisp and clean appearance for any shelf system. Floating shelves come with a  smart bracket design that is recessed into the back of the shelf so it cannot be seen. We first installed the racket onto the brick wall using the same masonry drill and rawl plug technique used to install the blinds. We carefully used a spirit level to ensure the bracket was horizontal. Then it was a mater of sliding the shelf carefully onto the bracket. The shelf was secured onto the bracket by means of small self tapping screws underneath the shelf. The finished shelf looks great: