Time is now to spruce up
WHETHER you have to sell your home now out of necessity or just have a bit of extra time to devote to your castle, there are plenty of ways to spruce up your property while the COVID-19 pandemic keeps people at home.
In the Far North, one of the first jobs is ridding surfaces of mould.
Top Gun water blasting owner John Giarrusso, who has been servicing the Cairns area for the last 23 years, said periods of lockdown were the perfect time to look around the house and make a list of jobs.
“I’m getting a couple of calls from people who, now they’ve got more time to look around, are starting to say, ‘we should get this done’,” he said.
“Generally they start noticing how dusty and mouldy the house exterior is. We usually do a high-pressure clean from the gutters down, but also do gutters, walls and windows, mouldy driveways and paths.
“We’ve done a few gutter cleaning and roof cleaning jobs because some of the rain we’ve had recently means they’ve overflowed.
“I’ve noticed an increase in solar panel cleaning too. They get a layer of dust on them and now owners have got more time to study their inverter reports they’ve noticed a decrease in power generation.”
Mr Giarrusso said, depending on the size of the house, it could take up to three hours to wash a house.
Pruning trees and ensuring shrubs and greenery were cut away from buildings and not left overhanging walkways was also a job which gave great results relative to the effort put in.
Mr Giarrusso said there had also been demand for repainting roofs.
Cairns Hire A Hubby business owner Matty Arnold said he had worked 60 hours the previous week on odd jobs for people.
But he was keeping it to outdoor tasks in order to maintain an appropriate social distance.
He said any repairs or maintenance jobs could easily be done while owners were at home for an indefinite period of time.