Deck Repair Service Cost WA 2026 - Complete Pricing Guide

Deck Repair Costs in Western Australia for 2026

Deck repairs sort into three tiers and the tier decides the price far more than the size of the deck does. Surface work makes up the cheap tier of the three. Refixing fixings that have worked loose runs $25 to $60 a square metre. Sanding back and re-oiling is $25 to $55 a square metre and should be happening on a schedule, not once the timber has already greyed. Replacing individual boards comes in at $45 to $110 a linear metre, with the spread driven by species and whether a match can be found.

Structural work makes up the expensive tier of the three. A bearer or joist replaced runs $110 to $280 a linear metre. A post and its stirrup is $280 to $650. Balustrade repair or replacement is $180 to $450 a metre, and that is deck balustrade and handrail repair work. Rebuilding a frame and relaying the existing boards reaches $220 to $480 a square metre, and full replacement $320 to $750.

Western Australian decks fail in a pattern that reflects the ground and the climate. Perth metropolitan termite pressure is high, and a timber deck built low to sandy ground with a garden bed against it gives subterranean termites moisture, concealment and food in one place. The frame goes before the boards do, and the first sign is usually a board that springs underfoot rather than anything visible.

The sun does the other half of the damage. Ultraviolet levels here are high and summer surface temperatures on a west-facing deck are extreme, so a coating that would hold for three years in Hobart gives twelve to eighteen months on an exposed Perth deck. Jarrah left unoiled greys, checks and splinters quickly, and once the surface has cracked, water gets into the board. New construction is decking and the trade generally is carpentry services.

What Actually Fails on a Western Australian Deck

Decks fail from the bottom up and from the fixings out, which is why the visible surface is the least reliable guide to what is wrong. Coating failure comes first, and it counts as maintenance rather than damage. The oil or stain breaks down under ultraviolet, the surface greys, then the timber checks into fine surface cracks. At that point water gets into the board at every crack and the board starts to deteriorate. Caught at the greying stage it is a sand and re-oil. Left for several more years it becomes board replacement.

Fixing failure comes next and it tells you something. Nails or screws that lift, pop or spin are either corroded, or the timber they are holding has softened, or the board is moving more than the fixing can accommodate. A single popped nail means nothing at all. A pattern of loose fixings along one joist line is that joist reporting a problem.

Then come the failures in the structure itself. Rot in a bearer or joist where water has been sitting or where the timber meets a masonry wall without a gap. Termite damage, which leaves the surface intact and the inside hollow. Post and stirrup failure where the stirrup has corroded at the concrete line or the footing has moved in sand. And balustrade failure, which on an older deck is as often a compliance problem as a physical one.

The one that matters most is also the hardest to see. A deck more than a metre above ground with a failing balustrade, a soft joist near the edge or a corroded stirrup is a genuine injury risk, and these do not announce themselves. If your deck is raised and has not been looked at underneath in five years, that is the inspection to book, and building inspection or structural inspection will do it properly.

The Timbers WA Decks Are Built From

Species decides the repair cost more than any other single factor, because matching an existing deck is often harder than the carpentry. Jarrah is the Western Australian timber and the state has a long relationship with it. It is a dense, durable local hardwood with excellent natural resistance to decay and insect attack, it weathers to a silver grey if left alone, and it is genuinely hard to work, so it needs pre-drilling and good tooling. Recycled and reclaimed jarrah from demolished houses supports a whole secondary market in Perth, and for a repair on an older jarrah deck, reclaimed boards often match better than new ones.

Merbau, sometimes sold as kwila, is the imported hardwood that dominated decking nationally for two decades and appears on a great many Perth decks built since the 1990s. It is durable and stable, and its one characteristic owners complain about is tannin bleed, which stains pale paving and render below a new deck for the first few months. Treated pine is the budget option, structurally fine when the treatment level matches the use, and it needs its cut ends treated at installation or they become the first failure point.

The repair implications differ considerably from species to species. Jarrah is extremely durable so a jarrah deck usually fails at the fixings, the coating or the frame long before the boards go. Merbau is stable but will eventually check and splinter without a coating. Treated pine rots where the treatment has been breached, particularly at cut ends and around fixings, so pine deck repairs cluster at the board ends and at the joist line.

For hardwood boards the practical advice is to buy a few spares at the time of any repair and store them under the house, because the colour and grade available in three years will not match what you buy today. A timber yard can usually advise on current availability, and Perth suppliers carry both new and reclaimed jarrah. Surface restoration of hardwood decking overlaps with floor sanding and polishing technique.

Termites and the Perth Pressure Zone

Perth sits in one of the higher subterranean termite pressure areas in the country, and a timber deck is close to the ideal target. What termites need is moisture, concealment and cellulose, and a low deck over sandy ground supplies all three. They travel from the soil up inside a post or through a gap behind a bearer, and they eat the inside of the timber while leaving a thin outer shell intact. That is why a bearer can look entirely sound, take paint, and still be hollow enough to fail under load.

The invitations are all things an owner can remove. A deck frame sitting directly on or within a hundred millimetres of soil. A garden bed, mulch or lawn built up against the bearers. Reticulation throwing water onto the frame every morning. Timber offcuts, firewood or a pile of pavers stored underneath. And a deck built over a termite barrier in a way that bridges it, which a great many Perth decks do without anybody realising.

The signs are subtle and repay learning in detail. A hollow note when a bearer or post is tapped firmly. Mud or shelter tubes on a slab edge, a pier or the inside face of a post. A board or a joist that gives under a screwdriver with no visible rot. Swarming winged alates on a warm spring evening. Fine soil-like material spilling out of a crack. Any one of those justifies an inspection at $280 to $550 through termite inspection.

The repair is structural and it should not be rushed into without an inspection first, because replacing the eaten timber without dealing with the colony means doing it again. Allow $110 to $280 a linear metre for bearers and joists and $280 to $650 for a post, and treat the clearance and drainage problems in the same visit. Work on the structure itself falls under structural repairs.

Posts, Stirrups and Footings in Sand

Deck posts fail differently in Western Australia and the reason is what they are standing in. A deck post should sit on a galvanised stirrup set into a concrete footing, with the timber held clear of the concrete so water cannot wick up into the end grain. In Perth sand the footing has to do all the work, because sand provides very little lateral support on its own, so the concrete pad needs adequate depth and diameter. A post concreted directly into the ground without a stirrup is the older detail, and that is the one that rots at the ground line every time.

Limestone under the sand creates the opposite problem. Where a post hole hits cap rock at a few hundred millimetres, the footing ends up shallow and sitting on rock, which is a sound arrangement if the post is mechanically anchored into the limestone with a chemical anchor system from Ramset or Hilti, and a poor one if somebody simply poured a pad on top of the rock. Ask what is under a post before agreeing a price to reset it.

Stirrup corrosion is the most common structural failure on an older Perth deck. The stirrup is galvanised steel and it corrodes at the line where it enters the concrete, because that is where moisture and oxygen meet and where salt collects. The post above can be sound jarrah throughout and the deck can still be unsafe. This is one to look at specifically, with a torch, from underneath.

Replacing a post and stirrup runs $280 to $650 and the work involves propping the deck, cutting out the old post, breaking out and repouring the footing if it has failed, setting a new stirrup and fitting the post. On a coastal block specify a heavier galvanised or stainless stirrup than the original, because the original specification is what failed. Excavation of new footings is post hole digging and concrete work is concreting services.

Bearers, Joists and the Frame Under the Boards

The frame is where deck repair money actually goes, and it is the half of the deck nobody photographs. Bearers run from post to post and carry the joists. Joists run across the bearers at set centres and carry the boards. Both are sized by span tables in the residential timber framing standard, and both fail in the same three ways: rot where water sits or where they meet masonry without a gap, termite attack from below, and splitting or crushing at the connections.

The connection points deserve special attention in Western Australia. Where a bearer or a ledger is bolted to a double brick wall, the detail must hold the timber clear of the masonry with a flashing above it, because brickwork holds moisture and timber hard against it will rot. A ledger bolted flat to a rendered wall with no gap and no flashing is a very common older detail, and it is where a deck most often fails at the house end, which is also the most dangerous place for it to fail.

Diagnosis means probing the timber, not looking at it. A screwdriver pushed firmly into a bearer at the post, at the wall connection and anywhere stained will find soft timber immediately. Tapping along the length will find the hollow note of termite damage. Sighting along the underside will reveal any deflection. None of that takes long and all of it has to happen before a quote means anything.

Frame members come in at $110 to $280 a linear metre, and the variation is access. A joist reachable from below on a raised deck is straightforward. The same joist on a deck 300 millimetres off the ground means lifting boards to work from above, which adds board handling and the risk of breaking boards that then need matching. Where more than about a third of the frame is affected, a rebuild at $220 to $480 a square metre is usually better value than chasing it piece by piece.

Board Replacement and Fixings

Board work shows more than anything else on a deck repair, and getting it wrong is something you then look at every day. Boards come in at $45 to $110 a linear metre and the job itself is straightforward: the old board comes out, the joist tops are checked and cleaned, and a new board goes in with a consistent gap. The gap between boards matters more than people think. Hardwood boards move with moisture, so too tight and they bind and cup, too wide and the deck looks wrong and small items fall through. Matching the existing gap is part of the job.

Colour is the problem nobody warns owners about. A new board in an eight year old jarrah or merbau deck will be obviously different for the first season, and oiling will not hide it. The options are to accept it and wait, to source reclaimed timber of similar age, to sand and re-oil the whole deck after the repair so everything starts from the same surface, or to place new boards where they are least noticed. Sanding the whole deck is usually the answer that satisfies people.

Fixings are worth upgrading at the same time. Older decks used plain galvanised nails, which lift over time as boards move and corrode on coastal blocks. Stainless or heavily galvanised decking screws hold far better, can be removed without damaging the board, and do not lift. Hidden fastener systems are available but make future board replacement harder, which is a genuine trade-off on a deck you intend to keep.

One detail applies specifically to dense hardwood boards. Jarrah and merbau both need pre-drilling, and a screw driven into dense hardwood without a pilot hole will split the board or snap. A contractor who is pre-drilling is doing it right even though it looks slow. Fixings that have been driven without pre-drilling show up later as splits radiating from the screw head.

Balustrades, Barriers and the One Metre Rule

What follows has a safety consequence rather than a cost one, and the numbers are specific enough to check with a tape measure this afternoon. A barrier is required wherever it is possible to fall one metre or more from a trafficable surface to the level beneath. Where one is required, the barrier must be not less than one metre above the deck floor. On stairs the handrail or barrier must be not less than 865 millimetres above the nosings of the treads. Openings in a barrier must not permit a 125 millimetre sphere to pass through, and where a barrier is attached to a vertical face, the gap between the barrier and the floor edge must not exceed 40 millimetres.

There is a further rule for higher decks. Where the fall exceeds four metres, any horizontal element within the barrier between 150 millimetres and 760 millimetres above the floor must give a child nothing to climb on, which rules out mid-rails, horizontal wires and ledges in that band. Vertical balusters and glass panels remain acceptable under that rule. That catches a lot of second storey balconies with horizontal wire balustrades installed for the look.

Older Perth decks fail these tests regularly, and not through neglect. Requirements have tightened over time, a deck built to the rules of 1995 is not necessarily compliant now, and a deck built without a permit may never have been checked against anything. The three to measure yourself are the height above the deck, the gap test with a 125 millimetre object, and whether the whole assembly moves when pushed hard at the top rail. Repair or replacement runs $180 to $450 a metre depending on material and whether the posts are sound. Where a post has rotted at its base the post is the job and the rail is incidental. Glass panel balustrades have their own hardware and that is glass balustrade installation and repairs territory, while new work generally is balustrade installation.

Stairs and Handrails

Deck stairs take more punishment than the deck does and they are where most deck injuries actually happen. Treads wear and cup, stringers rot at the bottom where they meet the ground or a paved area, and the fixings at the top connection work loose from repeated loading. The bottom of a timber stringer sitting directly on soil or on paving that holds water is the single most common rot point on any deck, because it combines end grain, moisture and no air movement. Dimensional consistency is where the safety issue sits. Risers and goings have to be consistent within a flight, because people climb stairs by rhythm and not by looking, and a single tread that differs by more than a few millimetres is a trip. On a deck where somebody has replaced one or two treads with timber of a different thickness, that inconsistency has been built in, and correcting it matters even though the stairs feel usable.

Handrails on stairs must be not less than 865 millimetres above the nosings of the treads, and the same 125 millimetre opening rule applies to any barrier alongside. A graspable handrail matters as much as the height, since a wide flat top rail is hard to hold and gives nothing to grab if somebody slips. Repairs run from $180 to $650 for individual treads and fixings up to $1,200 to $3,500 for a full flight rebuilt with new stringers, depending on width and rise. Where the stringer base is the problem, the repair should include getting it clear of the ground on a concrete pad or a galvanised shoe, because replacing it in the same detail reproduces the failure. Dedicated work sits under external stair and handrail repairs.

Oils, Stains and the Western Australian Sun

Coating a deck in this climate is maintenance on a schedule, and the schedule is shorter here than almost anywhere else in the country. Ultraviolet breaks down the lignin at the timber surface, which is what turns an oiled jarrah deck grey. Once the surface greys it begins to check into fine cracks, and water enters at every crack. Perth ultraviolet levels are high and a west or north facing deck reaches summer surface temperatures that no coating enjoys, so a decking oil gives 12 to 18 months on an exposed deck and perhaps two to three years on a shaded one.

Three product families do the job in different ways. Penetrating oils soak into the timber, keep the natural look, weather by fading instead of peeling and are easy to re-apply over themselves, which makes them the usual choice. Decking stains add pigment, which blocks more ultraviolet and lasts longer, at the cost of looking less like bare timber. Film-forming coatings and decking paints last longest on paper and are the worst choice on a trafficked deck, because when they fail they peel and the only way back is a full sand.

Preparation is what decides the result here. A deck that has greyed needs the degraded surface removed, either by sanding or with a timber cleaner and brightener, because oil applied over a grey weathered surface sits on dead fibre and lifts. Sanding and re-oiling runs $25 to $55 a square metre and is the reset that makes subsequent maintenance coats work. Cabot, Intergrain, Feast Watson and Sikkens products are all widely available through Perth outlets.

One practical warning belongs here about pressure washing. A high pressure washer on a timber deck will raise the grain, erode the softer early wood and leave a furry surface that then needs sanding, and on an older board it will take material off. Use a low pressure wash with a cleaner instead, and save the pressure for concrete. Coating work falls under exterior painting and painting services.

Salt, Coastal Decks and Corrosion

On a coastal Western Australian block the timber usually outlasts the metal holding it together, and that reverses the usual order of deck repairs. Salt aerosol carried inland on the afternoon sea breeze settles on every surface and holds moisture against metal long after rain has stopped. On a deck that means nails and screws corroding in the boards, joist hangers and bracket plates rusting at their fixings, bolts at the bearer connections losing section, and post stirrups corroding at the concrete line. The jarrah can be sound and the deck can still be unsafe.

Corrosion in fixings also damages the timber around them. Iron staining spreads as a black halo in hardwood, particularly in jarrah and merbau where the tannins react with the iron, and the timber at the fixing softens. That is why an old deck often has sound boards with soft, stained holes, and why simply driving a new screw into the same hole achieves nothing.

Specification is very nearly the whole of the answer. Close to the surf, within a couple of hundred metres, stainless fixings and stainless or heavy galvanised brackets are the sensible minimum, and even stainless will tea-stain, which is cosmetic. Further inland, a heavy hot-dip galvanised specification is adequate. Mixing metals causes its own problems, so a galvanised bracket with stainless screws through it, or copper in contact with galvanised steel, sets up galvanic corrosion.

Rinsing costs nothing at all and it genuinely works. Hosing a coastal deck and its fixings down two or three times a year with fresh water removes the salt before it does its work, and it matters most on the parts rain does not reach, which means under the deck, at the bearer connections and on the sheltered side of posts. Work health and safety requirements for contractors working at height on a raised deck sit with WorkSafe Western Australia.

Composite Decking Repairs

Composite boards have taken a large share of the Perth market over the past decade and they bring a different repair problem rather than no repair problem. The material is a wood-flour and polymer composite, either uncapped or with a bonded polymer cap, and the things it does well are real enough. It does not rot, it does not need oiling, termites have no interest in it, and it does not splinter. Brands including Modwood, Ekodeck, Trex and NewTechWood are all sold into the Perth market and most carry long warranties.

What goes wrong with them is different from timber. Composite boards expand and contract with temperature far more than timber does, so a deck installed without the specified end gaps in a Perth summer will buckle, and the first hot spell after installation is when it shows. Dark boards get extremely hot underfoot in this climate, hot enough to be unpleasant barefoot. Scratches from furniture and dog claws cannot be sanded out on a capped board, because sanding removes the cap. And early uncapped products faded and stained considerably.

That turns composite repairs into a matching exercise. Composite ranges, colours and board profiles change frequently, so a damaged board on a seven year old deck may have no current equivalent. The practical approaches are to harvest a board from a concealed area such as under a bench or behind a planter, to accept a near match placed where it is least visible, or to replace a whole section to a natural break. The frame underneath is still timber or steel on almost every composite deck, so everything in this page about bearers, joists, posts, stirrups and termites applies in full. A composite deck is not a maintenance free deck, it is a deck whose maintenance has moved from the boards to the frame, and the frame is the part that carries people. Inspection still matters, and structural inspection is how to get it done.

Building Permits and the 500 Millimetre Threshold

Decks sit in the part of Western Australian building regulation where the answer depends on your local government, so the general rule is a starting point and not the final word. The common threshold across WA local governments is height. A deck more than 500 millimetres above natural ground level generally requires a building permit, while one at or below 500 millimetres often does not, provided nothing else triggers approval. The City of Joondalup, for example, requires a building permit where a deck is higher than 500 millimetres. Other councils apply the same figure, but the detail varies, so confirm with yours rather than relying on a neighbour or a contractor.

Planning approval runs separately from the building permit and is driven by the Residential Design Codes. Where a deck is 500 millimetres or more above natural ground level, planning approval is generally needed unless it complies with the setback and privacy screen provisions. On an R20 coded lot the minimum side or rear setback is typically one metre, rising to 1.5 metres for longer decks without privacy screens, and privacy screens where required are typically a minimum of 1.6 metres high within 7.5 metres of a boundary.

That matters for a repair in one specific circumstance. Like-for-like repair of an existing deck is maintenance and does not need a permit. Rebuilding a deck, raising it, extending it or changing its footprint generally does, and if the original deck was built without a permit the rebuild is the moment that comes to light. It is better to find that out before the work than during a sale.

Where you do not know whether your deck was approved, your local government will have the records and will usually tell you over the counter. A deck that was never approved is not automatically a problem, but it is something a buyer will ask about, and resolving it is far easier while the house is not on the market. Building and Energy sets out the current building requirements, at the Government of Western Australia, and the construction provisions behind them by the Australian Building Codes Board.

Who Can Do the Work and WA Thresholds

Carpentry is not a separately licensed trade in Western Australia, so the protection on a deck repair comes from the contract and the thresholds rather than from a licence number. Oversight of building work here sits with Building and Energy, a regulator inside the Department of Local Government, Industry Regulation and Safety whose two statutory officers are the Building Commissioner and the Director of Energy Safety. Builder registration is what bites above a value threshold, and some contractors still name a body that has been superseded, so run any registration number past the current register yourself.

Three numbers shape the paperwork on deck work. The written home building contract requirement covers fixed-price residential work from $7,500 up to $500,000. Home indemnity insurance kicks in once permitted work passes $20,000, and its deposit-loss cover reaches $40,000. No deposit may exceed 6.5 per cent of the contract price. Those three figures are specific to Western Australia.

Most deck repairs fall below $7,500 and can therefore be done by a carpenter or a competent handyman without builder registration. Get the scope in writing regardless, naming which boards, joists and bearers are being replaced, the timber species and grade, the fixing specification, and what rate applies if more rot is found once boards come up. A full deck rebuild can cross $7,500 and sometimes $20,000, which brings registration and insurance into play.

Two things to be clear about on a raised deck. Structural adequacy is not a matter of opinion, so where bearers, joists, posts or a barrier are being replaced, spans and fixings should follow the residential timber framing standard or an engineer. And statutory consumer guarantees apply to the workmanship regardless of what any warranty document says, which are administered by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Building and construction is one of the areas the State Administrative Tribunal hears, and the regulations are published at Western Australian Legislation and the standards through Standards Australia.

Perth Metropolitan Pricing

Metropolitan deck pricing is competitive on surface work and much more variable on structural work, which tells you where to get more than one quote. Sanding and oiling is a commodity service with plenty of operators, and the rate is fairly consistent at $25 to $55 a square metre. Board replacement is competitively priced across the metro area. Frame and post work is where quotes diverge, because it requires a carpenter willing to prop a deck and take responsibility for structure, and fewer contractors want that job than want the sanding.

The metro area divides into three sub-markets that behave differently. Fixing corrosion runs fastest along the coast, from Fremantle north through Scarborough and Hillarys, so stainless specification is routine and stirrup replacement is common. The inner and older suburbs carry jarrah decks, often with a ledger bolted to a double brick wall and often with pre-1990 compliance, which is the most involved work. Newer merbau, treated pine and composite decks fill the northern and southern corridors, where the failures are coatings, fixings and termite pressure on low decks over sand.

Access under the deck is the cost variable that nobody quotes for until they look. A raised deck with standing room underneath makes frame repair straightforward. A deck 300 to 500 millimetres off the ground means every frame repair is done from above by lifting boards, which adds board handling, breakage and matching, and can double the cost of replacing a single joist. For projects that go beyond repair, patio and verandah installation and pergola builders cover the structures that often get added alongside, and doing them in one visit saves a second mobilisation.

Regional Western Australia Pricing

Deck repairs travel better than most trades because the materials are available widely, so regional loadings are more modest here than on specialist work. Carpentry trades are strong through Mandurah and Peel and across the South West to Bunbury, Busselton and Margaret River, and the South West has proportionally more timber decks than Perth because the setting suits them. Loadings in those areas are small by comparison. Carpenters cover Albany, the Great Southern and Geraldton without difficulty, though matching an older hardwood may mean sourcing from a Perth timber yard.

Hardwood supply is the regional constraint worth planning around. Jarrah and merbau in a particular width, grade and colour are not stocked everywhere, and freighting long hardwood boards is awkward and they are easily damaged in transit. Where a repair needs matching timber, allow a lead time and order a generous margin rather than the exact linear metres. In the Goldfields, the Wheatbelt, the Pilbara and the Kimberley, rates run 30 to 70 per cent above metropolitan ones, so batch everything into one visit. Conditions change the approach in the north as well: coatings and oils have application temperature limits that a Pilbara summer day exceeds by the middle of the morning, so deck coating work up there belongs in the cooler months or at first light.

Bushfire prone areas are the regional factor that affects decks specifically. In the Perth hills, the South West, the Great Southern and much of the peri-urban fringe, a deck attached to a house in a designated bushfire prone area has construction requirements based on the assessed Bushfire Attack Level, and timber species, board gaps and the enclosure of the subfloor all come into it. Where the property is in the mapping, confirm the replacement detail before materials are ordered. Preparation and bushfire material for the state comes from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

What to Look Out For in a Deck Repair Quote

Deck quotes go wrong in one dominant way, and it comes down to whether anybody got underneath. The first question is what was probed and what was found. A contractor who has walked across the deck and quoted board replacement has priced what they could see. Ask whether bearers and joists were probed with a screwdriver at the post and wall connections, whether the stirrups were inspected at the concrete line, and ask to see photographs. Expect to pay a small inspection fee for that, and pay it willingly.

The second is where the quote draws the line between boards and frame. A quote for boards alone on a deck that springs underfoot is quoting the symptom, and the springing joist will still be there under new timber. Ask for a rate to apply if more rot or termite damage is found once boards come up, so that the variation is agreed in advance rather than negotiated once the deck is open. The third thing to settle is the balustrade. On any deck where a fall of a metre or more is possible, ask whether the existing barrier meets the one metre height, the 125 millimetre opening rule and the 40 millimetre floor gap, and whether the non-climbable band, meaning the zone between 150 and 760 millimetres above the floor, applies because the fall exceeds four metres. A repair that restores a non-compliant barrier to its original non-compliant state is a missed opportunity and a liability.

The fourth thing to settle is the specification itself. Which timber species and grade, what fixing specification given the distance to the coast, and will hardwood be pre-drilled. Then the matching question: who is sourcing boards, what happens if no match exists, and is a full sand and re-oil after the repair included so the new boards blend. That last item is what decides whether you are happy with the result.

Finally there is the paperwork and the cause. A written scope naming each member being replaced, a statement of what the contractor believes caused the failure, confirmation that spans and fixings follow the framing standard or an engineer, warranty terms including recurrence, and a deposit within the 6.5 per cent legal cap. For small ongoing maintenance between repairs, handyman services can usually cover it.