We have recently set up a Silver Saints Youtube chanel which will feature how 2 videos of our london handymen carrying out some of the more common jobs we take on.
We have posted our first video on how to hang a flat screen TV and aim to post a new video each week. Look out for next weeks video on changing sash cords.
Visit our chanel to view our most recent video - How to hang a flat screen TV.
Silver Saints - Londons premier handyman service.
Showing posts with label Silver Saints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silver Saints. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Sash Window Repair - Handyman London
One of the more specialist job Silver Saints London Handyman Service undertakes is the replacing of broken sash cord or sash spiral balances. As we head into summer and the temperature rises many people are opening their sash windows again after the long winter. Only to realise that the sash windows won't stay up, this is normally due to one of two things. The sash cord has broken and so the window is no longer attached to the weight or the window has been re-glazed with a thicker glass than it was first installed with and the weights are no longer heavy enough to keep the sash from sliding closed under its own weight. Both these are problems our handymen can fix.
Arriving in London six years ago from South Africa, sash windows were very new to me. In fact the only example of a sash window I had seen before was in old colonial hotels which are still scattered around South Africa. But sash windows have been around for a very long time and their popularity today is probably as high as it has ever been. In a recent search for a particular nylon sash cord I came across a specialist Sash Window design company that had an extensive history of the sash window.
The origins of the vertical sliding sash window are still subject to speculation and debate, but it would appear that the design probably derived from the much simpler horizontal sliding sash commonly known as the 'Yorkshire Sash'.
For many years it was believed that the vertical design had originated in Holland, during the later part of the Seventeenth Century. Others claimed it to be of French origin, as the word 'sash' is derived from the French word 'chassis' , meaning frame. However the French sash had not yet developed counter-balancing and the sliding sash frame was held in place by a swivel block.
The earliest recorded account may be that of W.Horman who in his 1589 'Vulgaria' wrote-"Glasen wyndowis let in the lyght.....I have many prety wyndowes shette with levys goynge up and down".
Certainly toward the end of the Seventeenth Century, sash windows were apparent in England examples include Chatsworth House (c1676 - 1680), Kensington Palace and Hampton Court Palace. Sir Christopher Wrens master joiner, Thomas Kinward, recorded possibly the earliest specification of a fully developed sash window, whilst working at Whitehall Palace. With the royal patronage and adoption by Wren, wooden sash windows soon became a fashionable status symbol across Britain and the Colonies.
Many earlier casement windows were replaced and sliding sash windows were used almost exclusively in new buildings, from royal palaces to simple cottages the sash ruled supreme and remained popular until the earlier part of this century.The sash offered many advantages, including being better suited to the wet British climate, as it can be closed down to a narrow gap, allowing for good ventilation whilst reducing the chance of rain entering. Being contained within the box, the sashes are less susceptible to distortion and rot than a hinged casement adding greatly to their life span. Aesthetically the sash is constructed from delicate sections of wood, with large areas of glass that add a certain grace, even when open they do not detract from the facade, as an open casement does.
Georgian architecture embraced sash windows wholeheartedly, improving the design from a single moving sash, with the top being fixed, to the more familiar system of two moveable sashes. Oak was the common timber used for construction, with thick glazing bars to hold the small, valuable crown glass panes, made by blowing. The 'bulls eye' formed at the centre by this manufacturing technique was commonly used at the rear of buildings. As glass manufacture improved larger panes started to appear and the ‘classic’ Georgian design consisting of six over six panes, with narrow glazing bars became the norm.
For the Victorians, box sash windows were a central focus to the character of their buildings, inside and out they lavished ornamentation and decoration on their homes. Curved horns, multi-arched heads, intricate mouldings, leaded lights and latticework started to appear in the sashes, which were often grouped into impressive bays and offset with ornate stone reveals. Graduating the size of windows from the ground upwards not only improved the perspective but also increased the amount of light to the lower rooms.
By the turn of the century the sash was the most widely used window, but since the first world war their popularity has been in decline. This decline is probanly due to the labour costs involved in their manufacture when compared to the easily mass produced wooden or metal casement window.
Given the advances in glass manufacturing and the increased efficiency of sash windows I think sash window will be around for a very long time still.
Arriving in London six years ago from South Africa, sash windows were very new to me. In fact the only example of a sash window I had seen before was in old colonial hotels which are still scattered around South Africa. But sash windows have been around for a very long time and their popularity today is probably as high as it has ever been. In a recent search for a particular nylon sash cord I came across a specialist Sash Window design company that had an extensive history of the sash window.
The origins of the vertical sliding sash window are still subject to speculation and debate, but it would appear that the design probably derived from the much simpler horizontal sliding sash commonly known as the 'Yorkshire Sash'.
For many years it was believed that the vertical design had originated in Holland, during the later part of the Seventeenth Century. Others claimed it to be of French origin, as the word 'sash' is derived from the French word 'chassis' , meaning frame. However the French sash had not yet developed counter-balancing and the sliding sash frame was held in place by a swivel block.
The earliest recorded account may be that of W.Horman who in his 1589 'Vulgaria' wrote-"Glasen wyndowis let in the lyght.....I have many prety wyndowes shette with levys goynge up and down".
Certainly toward the end of the Seventeenth Century, sash windows were apparent in England examples include Chatsworth House (c1676 - 1680), Kensington Palace and Hampton Court Palace. Sir Christopher Wrens master joiner, Thomas Kinward, recorded possibly the earliest specification of a fully developed sash window, whilst working at Whitehall Palace. With the royal patronage and adoption by Wren, wooden sash windows soon became a fashionable status symbol across Britain and the Colonies.
Many earlier casement windows were replaced and sliding sash windows were used almost exclusively in new buildings, from royal palaces to simple cottages the sash ruled supreme and remained popular until the earlier part of this century.The sash offered many advantages, including being better suited to the wet British climate, as it can be closed down to a narrow gap, allowing for good ventilation whilst reducing the chance of rain entering. Being contained within the box, the sashes are less susceptible to distortion and rot than a hinged casement adding greatly to their life span. Aesthetically the sash is constructed from delicate sections of wood, with large areas of glass that add a certain grace, even when open they do not detract from the facade, as an open casement does.
Georgian architecture embraced sash windows wholeheartedly, improving the design from a single moving sash, with the top being fixed, to the more familiar system of two moveable sashes. Oak was the common timber used for construction, with thick glazing bars to hold the small, valuable crown glass panes, made by blowing. The 'bulls eye' formed at the centre by this manufacturing technique was commonly used at the rear of buildings. As glass manufacture improved larger panes started to appear and the ‘classic’ Georgian design consisting of six over six panes, with narrow glazing bars became the norm.
For the Victorians, box sash windows were a central focus to the character of their buildings, inside and out they lavished ornamentation and decoration on their homes. Curved horns, multi-arched heads, intricate mouldings, leaded lights and latticework started to appear in the sashes, which were often grouped into impressive bays and offset with ornate stone reveals. Graduating the size of windows from the ground upwards not only improved the perspective but also increased the amount of light to the lower rooms.
By the turn of the century the sash was the most widely used window, but since the first world war their popularity has been in decline. This decline is probanly due to the labour costs involved in their manufacture when compared to the easily mass produced wooden or metal casement window.
Given the advances in glass manufacturing and the increased efficiency of sash windows I think sash window will be around for a very long time still.
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Humor in the world of a London Handyman
Every so often we come across some amusing job requests and I love the fact that our customers are so confident in our service and so at ease with our handymen that they request us to do things like helping them when they have managed get their big toe stuck in the spout of their of bath tap or to open the sugar jar that has been closed too tightly. It is very rewarding to know that our customers rely on us for even the smallest/slightly embarrassing jobs.
Handymen are not without amusing moments themselves. I had a call from a customer who asked if I wouldn’t mind calling the handyman that was currently at her property to ask if he was ok and not injured in anyway. When I enquired if something had happened that he might injure himself the customer went on to explain that the handyman, who was there to fit a sash restrictor to a sash window, had been shown upstairs to the first floor where the sash window was located and then left to get on with the job. The customer went down stairs to find the handyman who she had just left upstairs letting himself in through the ground floor back door. As it turns out the handyman who had to stand on the window ledge to fit the restrictor had slipped, fallen out the window, rolled down the angled roof and landed in the flower bed in the back garden.
Thankfully it was not very high and the tightly packed flower bed provided a nice soft landing. In the end both I and the customer were in stitches when I called back to say that the handyman was perfectly fine aside from a bruised ego.
Handymen are not without amusing moments themselves. I had a call from a customer who asked if I wouldn’t mind calling the handyman that was currently at her property to ask if he was ok and not injured in anyway. When I enquired if something had happened that he might injure himself the customer went on to explain that the handyman, who was there to fit a sash restrictor to a sash window, had been shown upstairs to the first floor where the sash window was located and then left to get on with the job. The customer went down stairs to find the handyman who she had just left upstairs letting himself in through the ground floor back door. As it turns out the handyman who had to stand on the window ledge to fit the restrictor had slipped, fallen out the window, rolled down the angled roof and landed in the flower bed in the back garden.
Thankfully it was not very high and the tightly packed flower bed provided a nice soft landing. In the end both I and the customer were in stitches when I called back to say that the handyman was perfectly fine aside from a bruised ego.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Handyman Services, The Credit Crunch & Falling Property Prices
It seems that you can’t watch the news or open a paper these days without hearing about the ‘credit crunch’ and the related fall in property prices. But are households feeling the pinch just yet or is it only mortgage lenders and estate agents who are struggling, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7385195.stm?
There is no doubt that when property prices are on the rise, homeowners, landlords and developers are all too happy to pour money into their properties. Most companies that are in the property or property services industry have benefitted from a decade of rising property prices and a long period of economic growth. But now that the boom appears to be turning to gloom will London homeowners begin to tighten their belts? Will they still be willing to fork out the best part of £100 an hour for a London plumber or electrician?
Well the answer is that they don’t have to and haven’t had to for about the last seven years. What a lot of people are starting to realise is that they don’t need a specialist plumber to fix a dripping tap or replace a toilet flush, it doesn’t take a qualified electrician to replace a light switch or ceiling rose, why get a carpenter to plane a door? All these small jobs, the kind a good DIY-er would tackle themselves, can be done by a specialist handyman. There are a number of London handyman services, most charge about half the hourly rate of a specialist tradesman.
The only worry about getting a handyman to do the work that is typically associated with specialist trades is over quality of workmanship. There are a lot of handyman services out there, but very few can offer consistently good handymen. Silver Saints only employ handymen with a professional background with a minimum of three years experience within the handyman industry. This means that they can guarantee you will get a handyman that is polite, communicates well and has a wide range of experience and knowledge every time you book.
So as the upside of owning a property becomes less of a sure thing, I think a lot of people are going to start realising the value of handyman services over specialist tradesmen to get all those small plumbing, electrical and carpentry jobs done.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Silver Saints Day Three
London's newest handyman service has just begun its third day of trading. We have three jobs booked in for today having taken a total of five bookings yesterday.
We have had a few teething problems, mostly to do with our website and our Google AdWords campaign. I spent almost two weeks designing our Google campaign and it worked perfectly for about two hours on Day 1, but then Google stopped showing our ads. I spent the rest of Day 1 trying to contact Google via email to find out what was going on. At the beginning of Day 2 our ads were showing again for the morning but not in the afternoon. JT managed to find a contact telephone number for Google and I spoke to one of their representatives. She explained that because our ad was new and was appearing at the top of the sponsored links so often it was flagged by their computers and our campaign paused until they reviewed it.
Luckily for us they approved our campaign and our ads are now showing again. I thus have high hopes for day 3 in terms of the number of bookings.
The second problem we've faced, is our website, http://www.silversaints.com/ . The website is vital to any professional handyman service, especially in London. Ours just was not ready in time, I forced the website designer to put a half complete website up on Day 1 so we had something to point our Google campaign to. But there is no doubt, given the amount of people that have viewed the Silver Saints website versus the number of booking we have taken. That the uncompleted website is turning customers away. A new version will be uploaded this morning and the final completed version should be up by Monday next week.
In order to try to drum up a few more jobs, JT has been dropping 500 leaflets a day around South West London. The weather in London this week has been ideal for this type of activity!
Keep reading for updates on exactly how things are progressing with our handyman service.
We have had a few teething problems, mostly to do with our website and our Google AdWords campaign. I spent almost two weeks designing our Google campaign and it worked perfectly for about two hours on Day 1, but then Google stopped showing our ads. I spent the rest of Day 1 trying to contact Google via email to find out what was going on. At the beginning of Day 2 our ads were showing again for the morning but not in the afternoon. JT managed to find a contact telephone number for Google and I spoke to one of their representatives. She explained that because our ad was new and was appearing at the top of the sponsored links so often it was flagged by their computers and our campaign paused until they reviewed it.
Luckily for us they approved our campaign and our ads are now showing again. I thus have high hopes for day 3 in terms of the number of bookings.
The second problem we've faced, is our website, http://www.silversaints.com/ . The website is vital to any professional handyman service, especially in London. Ours just was not ready in time, I forced the website designer to put a half complete website up on Day 1 so we had something to point our Google campaign to. But there is no doubt, given the amount of people that have viewed the Silver Saints website versus the number of booking we have taken. That the uncompleted website is turning customers away. A new version will be uploaded this morning and the final completed version should be up by Monday next week.
In order to try to drum up a few more jobs, JT has been dropping 500 leaflets a day around South West London. The weather in London this week has been ideal for this type of activity!
Keep reading for updates on exactly how things are progressing with our handyman service.
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Silver Saints - The Beginning
After 6 years of preparation and training and 8 weeks of development, Silver Saints is about to go live. All the support I've received over the last few weeks from my friends and family has been very flattering and I thank them all.
When I started working for Redjacks six years ago, we wanted to revolutionise the handyman industry by offering a flexible, cost effective and friendly service. As we grew bigger these goals started to be pushed aside. When the company, now trading as 0800handyman, was sold in December 2007 these goals seemed to be forgotten by its new owners. They saw value in the brand that we had created and it seems that their goal was now to use that brand to franchise the service to other major UK cities.
As General Manager of 0800handyman when it was sold, I was forced to reflect on my current position in the Company and what direction I wanted the Company move in. It was clear that my vision and that of the new owners were not even close to being aligned. Thus I decided to leave 0800handyman and start my own London Handyman Service.
Learning from all the mistakes we had made in starting and growing Redjacks. I have set up a new handyman service called Silver Saints whose operations and policies are based on our original goals of providing flexible, cost effective and friendly service.
As with any small and growing company, we rely heavily on referrals and word of mouth. So please do tell all your friends and colleagues about our service, become our facebook friend and read our company blog regularly (readers are encouraged to leave comments on the blog)
Trading begins on 5th May 2008!
Seamus
Managing Director
When I started working for Redjacks six years ago, we wanted to revolutionise the handyman industry by offering a flexible, cost effective and friendly service. As we grew bigger these goals started to be pushed aside. When the company, now trading as 0800handyman, was sold in December 2007 these goals seemed to be forgotten by its new owners. They saw value in the brand that we had created and it seems that their goal was now to use that brand to franchise the service to other major UK cities.
As General Manager of 0800handyman when it was sold, I was forced to reflect on my current position in the Company and what direction I wanted the Company move in. It was clear that my vision and that of the new owners were not even close to being aligned. Thus I decided to leave 0800handyman and start my own London Handyman Service.
Learning from all the mistakes we had made in starting and growing Redjacks. I have set up a new handyman service called Silver Saints whose operations and policies are based on our original goals of providing flexible, cost effective and friendly service.
As with any small and growing company, we rely heavily on referrals and word of mouth. So please do tell all your friends and colleagues about our service, become our facebook friend and read our company blog regularly (readers are encouraged to leave comments on the blog)
Trading begins on 5th May 2008!
Seamus
Managing Director
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
