John Speranza, owner of House Doctors Handyman Service in Robbinsville, a franchise, has been fixing things since he was a kid. Well, mostly taking things apart and then fixing them.
He learned most of what he knows about home repair by watching his dad fix things around the house. “I was the helper,” Speranza said. “But I picked up on what he was doing and how he was doing it.”
Speranza’s dad had a career building airplanes for a defense company.
Today, Speranza has made his fixing obsession into a career and is enjoying the experience.
“I’ve been doing this all my life,” Speranza said. “This is something I’ve always enjoyed.”
Speranza focuses his business on small home repair jobs, like fixing sheet rock, doors, painting, fence repair, deck repair, grouting, caulking and other odd jobs.
A lot of times these are “Things that a lot of folks, if they had time to do they’d do on the weekend but they don’t,” he said.
What he enjoys best about the job are the challenges he faces in coming up with solutions to fix the problems.
“There’s a certain amount of satisfaction you receive when you are presented with a challenge,” he said. “Every week there’s something I haven’t seen or haven’t done. I’ll try to find a solution to the problem and make it work.”
Part of his philosophy is to treat the client’s home as if it were his own, he said. That involves a sense of care and dedication, he said.
“It does me no good to hurry through a job,” he said.
Because a lot of the work is projects the home owners themselves can’t complete due to time or ability, Speranza ends up doing a lot of work for elderly or disabled clients. Helping those in need is also satisfying, he said.
“In day-to-day living, some things are going to go wrong,” he said. “Some things you can ignore, some things you can’t and if you’re an elderly person, for example, you may need some help.”
While home repair was always a hobby, Speranza didn’t really think about making a career out of it until 1998, when he completed his first professional job on his own without the franchise. Prior to 1998, Speranza had worked for 15 years as a district manager for the now-defunct Dean Floor Company; he spent five years at Kodak after that and has now run House Doctors for the last five years.
Speranza is a licensed contractor. The work he does on a client’s home is guaranteed for up to a year, he said.
Clients must first call the business, and Speranza will go out to their home to make a written estimate, which he will send via E-mail, fax, or describe via phone and set up a subsequent visit to complete the work. Customers can expect him to begin the project anywhere from two days after a call to two weeks depending on the schedule. A lot of his business, at least 40 percent, comes from repeat customers, he said.
Speranza has lived in Robbinsville for 20 years. He is married and has a daughter Claire, 14 who will attend Robbinsville High School in September. In the past, he has coached recreational lacrosse and softball in town as well. For more information, call (609) 481-8016 or go online to housedoctors.com.
