General handyman — μαστορέματα

Why this trade is worth more here

On the mainland you call a plumber for the tap and a carpenter for the door and it is mildly annoying. Here, each of those is a person driving across an island, possibly parking a long way from your door and carrying tools up eighty steps. The travel dominates the cost, and for a ten-minute job it dwarfs it entirely.

Which is why the economics of a handyman are different on Santorini. One person, one visit, one lot of travel, and the twelve things on the list get done. The alternative is not twelve cheaper visits — it is the list never getting done at all, which is what usually happens.

What is actually on the list

The same items recur across almost every property here, and most of them trace back to salt, wind or dust.

Seized shutters and hinges

Salt gets into everything that moves outdoors. Shutters are the classic: stiff, then jammed, then forced and broken. Servicing them annually is a small job; replacing them is not.

Failed silicone

Around showers, sinks and windows. In a humid property that has stood closed all winter it goes black, and it is a twenty-minute job that prevents a much larger damp problem.

Doors that stick

Frames move with the wind and with seasonal humidity. Usually an adjustment, occasionally a plane, rarely a new door.

Fly screens

Torn every season by wind, and the single most valuable thing on a rental property in mosquito season.

Curtain rails, shelves, mirrors, TV brackets

Fixing anything into rubble stone or tuff is not the same as fixing into plasterboard, and the wrong plug in the wrong wall pulls out with the shelf.

Dripping taps and running cisterns

A washer or a valve. Worth doing on an island where water is metered, tanked and expensive.

Light fittings and bulbs at height

Common on properties with the high vaulted ceilings this island builds.

Gutters, downpipes and roof drains

Cleared before winter, because the first heavy rain finds every blockage at once.

Where a handyman stops

A good one tells you what is not theirs, and that honesty is worth paying for. The boundaries that matter here:

• New electrical circuits or anything at the board. Certification is required and a handyman cannot provide it. Replacing a light fitting is fine; adding a circuit is not. See electrician.
• Anything structural. A crack, a bulging retaining wall or a sagging beam is not a filling job. See structural works.
• Waterproofing a roof. Patching where water comes in is almost never where the water gets in. See waterproofing.
• Gas. Not a handyman job anywhere, and particularly not here.
• Work needing a permit. If it changes the external appearance in a traditional settlement, it is a planning question first.

What this trade covers

• The accumulated small-repairs list, batched into a half or full day.
• Shutter, hinge and window hardware servicing — the annual salt job.
• Silicone renewal in bathrooms and kitchens.
• Door and window adjustment, draught sealing, fly screens.
• Fixing things to difficult walls: rubble stone, tuff, rendered masonry.
• Flat-pack assembly, shelving, brackets, curtain poles.
• Tap washers, cistern valves, waste traps and other minor plumbing.
• Like-for-like light fittings and switches, and bulb changes at height.
• Gutter and roof-drain clearing before the winter rain.
• Pre-season property checks for owners who are not on the island.