Handyman in Soweto

Working in Soweto

In Soweto, houses keep growing. Many started as small four-roomed council homes and have since gained a back room, a second storey or a row of rooms to rent out. Each addition joins onto older brickwork and an older roof, and those joins are usually where trouble shows first.

Most of the work Innocent travels here for follows from that. Older rooms were often never given a ceiling. Flat roofs over extensions leak when the summer storms come through. And the front of the house needs steel: gates, burglar bars and security doors. Innocent can handle all of it on one visit, from Dobsonville and Orlando to Protea Glen.

Matchbox houses, extensions and backyard rooms

The older parts of Soweto, such as Orlando, Mofolo and Dube, are built around the small brick houses people call matchbox houses. Many of these went up without ceilings, so the rooms get hot in January and cold in July. Owners who extend usually put a flat or low-pitched roof over the new rooms, and the seam between the old roof and the new one needs proper waterproofing. Newer areas like Protea Glen have more recent houses with their own list of painting and finishing jobs.

Getting to Soweto

Soweto lies almost straight south of Muldersdrift, down through Roodepoort. Dobsonville and Meadowlands, on the Roodepoort side, are closer than Pimville or Diepkloof in the east. Send every job on the property in one WhatsApp, with photos. Innocent can then bring the right materials and get through as much as possible in one trip.