New homeowner setup and move-in help

Just closed on a house? Slava can come once, ideally before the boxes are open, and work through the first list: alarms tested or swapped, the TV and shelves up, furniture built, rods and blinds hung, and the small fixes your inspector wrote down. Cedar Mill Property Repair is serving Bethany, Cedar Mill, Beaverton and nearby. A move-in visit typically comes to $250-$1,500, labour only (Portland-area estimate, November 2026) . Text your list, a few photos or the repair pages of the report.

Slava does the work himself, with seven years of hands-on experience behind him.

What can a handyman do in your first week in a new house?

Most move-in lists fall into three piles. Everything on it sits under our small jobs work.

• Safety: alarms for smoke and CO, straps on the water heater, the dryer vent, tall furniture fixed to the wall.
• Setup: mounting the TV, shelves, curtain rods and blinds, art and mirrors, beds and flat-pack furniture.
• What the last owner left: an old TV bracket and its anchor holes, a door that rubs, a dripping faucet cartridge, tired tub caulk, weatherstrip that no longer seals.

A few things we leave to others. We don't rekey locks (a locksmith does), and we don't touch garage door openers, furnaces or AC (filters included), or gas lines. Hauling off boxes or whatever the seller left in the garage isn't ours either. Everything else we turn down sits on the not-offered page.

How much does new homeowner setup cost around Portland?

Figures below are November 2026 market numbers for the Portland area. Most come from usual hours multiplied by local hourly rates, so they aren't our quotes yet.

Every row is labour only except hard-wired alarms, where the alarms are in the price . Booked one by one, each small item starts close to a minimum visit, so putting ten of them on one trip usually costs less than ten separate calls. Slava prices the list from the hours it takes and you agree the number before he starts . The hourly rate and the minimum charge sit on our prices.

What should you fix first from your home inspection report?

Your inspection report is already a to-do list, it just isn't sorted by who does what. Send us the summary or the repair pages and Slava splits it three ways: the handyman items he can price, the items for a plumber, electrician, roofer or heating company (we name the trade), and the items that can wait for dry weather.

On west-side reports, the handyman pile often holds things like an alarm with no date on it, a water heater with one loose strap, a flattened dryer duct, tub caulk gone black or split, light showing under the back door, a downspout dumping next to the foundation, or soft wood at a door sill or fascia board. If you're on the selling side instead, see repairs before a sale.

Which safety items should be done before you unpack?

Smoke and CO alarms. Turn each one over and read the date on the back. US fire-safety advice is to replace the whole alarm every 10 years, and the ones a seller leaves behind often have no date anyone remembers. We put in battery units or swap hard-wired interconnected ones; details on alarm installs.

Water heater straps. Two straps, one in the top third of the tank and one in the bottom third, screwed into studs. A tank that tips in an earthquake can tear its water and gas connections loose. Strapping is part of our water heater work; gas connections themselves we don't do.

Tall furniture. Dressers and bookcases get a strap into a stud, for the same quake reason.

Dryer vent. Moving in is the one time you can be sure nobody has cleaned it for you. A crushed or overlong duct gets fixed on dryer vent visits.

Shut-offs and breakers. Slava can show you the valve that shuts off water to the whole house and label the breakers on the panel door. Labelling only, no panel work .

Should you mount and assemble before the furniture comes in?

Where you can, yes. An empty room is quicker, there's no couch to drag away from the stud, and drill dust lands on bare floor.

For the TV, decide the wall and the height before the movers come. Drywall over studs is the easy case; brick or a fireplace face takes masonry anchors and more time. See TV mounting. Beds, wardrobes and flat-pack pieces are their own afternoon, and on a moving day that's an afternoon you don't have; that's furniture assembly. Rods, blinds, mirrors and art go up in the same trip.

If the seller left a bracket on the wall, we take it off and patch the holes .

What does an older west-side house need before its first rainy season?

Much of the housing in Beaverton, Cedar Hills and Cedar Mill dates from the 1950s to the 1990s: ranches, split-levels and tract houses, many sitting over crawl spaces. Bethany is newer, mostly 1990s-2000s, which puts many of its water heaters, decks and fences at 25-30 years old at the same time. And the tall firs and maples here fill gutters every fall.

If you bought in summer, a short list before the rains start:

• Get the gutters cleaned once the needles and leaves are down.
• Extend the downspouts so rain off the roof drains a few feet out from the foundation.
• Look in the crawl space once: vent screens, the access hatch, any standing water or torn vapour barrier.
• Re-caulk or weatherstrip anywhere you see daylight around a door.

How does a move-in visit work?

Text the list, photos or the report's repair pages. Slava answers with the hours and a price range and books one visit, or two if the list runs long. Have the items you bought in the house, and know which wall the TV goes on .