General FAQs

Yes, at Honey Do Men Home Repair & Remodeling, estimates are always free. Our gutter cleaning and roofing repair estimates can be conducted without anyone at home. If needed, we can always call you at the number you provide us with to go over your estimate once we have diagnosed the problem. We request that estimates for the full installation of a roof or gutter system be conducted with somebody at home. This way, we can discuss the different options available to you before providing you with an estimate. If possible, it is preferable for all homeowners to be present during these types of inspections.

No, you do not need to be home while we do our work. Our trucks are stocked with all of the equipment that we will need, including a 100-ft. hose. We understand that some people are very busy and that the last thing you want to do is take a day off to wait at home for the “gutter guy” to show up.

You can know if your gutters were cleaned properly by whether or not they overflow when it rains. They should not overflow during a rainstorm if they have been cleaned correctly. We know that if you were going to put up a ladder to check on our work, you probably would have cleaned the gutters yourself. We give a 30-day guarantee on all gutter cleanings. At some point within those four weeks, it will most likely rain. When you see that your gutters are working properly and are not overflowing, you can know that your gutters were cleaned.

Yes, we do. We offer customized cleaning contracts for your home. Most homes require cleaning in the spring and fall seasons, but some only require cleaning once a year.

As a courtesy to our clients, we provide a reminder call two weeks before your scheduled appointment. As long as we don’t hear back from you saying otherwise, we will fulfill our end of the contract by showing up two weeks later to complete your gutter cleaning.

At Honey Do Men Home Repair & Remodeling, we are homeowners as well. We understand the value of a dollar. Having a contract with us does not mean that you are obligated to have your gutters cleaned during your contracted time. You may decide that you don’t need it this year or that you want to clean the gutters yourself. All we ask is that you just give us a call so that we can cancel your appointment for that season and put your file back into rotation for the following cleaning season. You will not be charged a cancellation fee or suffer any penalties.

We accept all major credit cards, checks, and money orders. We also offer specials at different times of the year, so call us to learn more.

Yes, we have more than 6,000 clients in Westchester and Putnam counties, including Carmel and Yonkers. We can guarantee that we will be working within five miles of your home in any given week.

This is twice the minimum requirement for either county, as well as twice as much as what most of our competitors carry. In addition, we also carry a $25,000 bond with Putnam County, and we carry a Workman’s Compensation Coverage Policy with the state of New York. Copies of our licenses and insurance policies can be provided to any client upon request.

We serve all of Westchester and Putnam counties. Our headquarters are based in Carmel, NY, located in Putnam County.

There are over 100 different types of gutter covers on the market and over 30 of them that claim to have a “lifetime guarantee.” But the simple facts are that (1) The warranties issued by these manufacturers have more holes in them than a slice of Swiss cheese; (2) You’ll never get a manufacturer to fess-up and either clean your gutters themselves or pay to have a cleaning done on their product; (3) Most homeowners will end up calling the company that installed the covers, not the manufacturer, and then you get a bunch of guys pointing their fingers at each other saying “it’s not my fault.”

That doesn’t happen at Honey Do Men. We warranty the work and the product that we install. We warranty the job, and if there is a problem with the job, you call us and we take care of it. We don’t care who lives in the house or even if you sell and move. We warranty our work no matter who lives there or who made the product we install.

We don’t care if there’s a manufacturing defect or problem with the product. We recommended the product, we installed it, we warrantied it, and we stand behind it no matter what.

Most gutter covers or gutter screens are designed to limit the number of gutter cleanings you need, not eliminate them. There are over 100 different types of gutter covers currently sold on the market today. Some are solid covers and some are perforate covers like a screen, but they all need some kind of maintenance.

A screened gutter is just that: a screen. They are designed to filter out the big leaves and debris that would otherwise cause the gutter to clog and overflow. However, they still let through the little stuff which can cause sludge to build up on the bottom of the gutter. That sludge will rot out the gutter or create a dam, causing the water to backup and overflow. For these reasons, the gutter still needs to be cleaned, just not as often.

Gutters that have no covers, “open gutters,” should be cleaned a minimum of two times a year, but may even need to be cleaned three or four times a year, depending on the number of trees you have and how close they are to your house. A gutter with a screen cover on it will need to be cleaned once a year every spring. “April showers bring May flowers, which bring June gutter cleanings.”

As long as you have a tree within 70 feet of your house, you’ll get stuff in your gutters from the tree. Fall foliage travels 20 to 30 feet from any tree. Spring foliage will travel 70 to 80 feet from any tree. The spring seedlings are designed to be carried great distances by the wind.

If this is the case for you, don’t be surprised if you go outside and look up and see grass or small trees growing out of your gutters. This is the seedlings implanting in the bed of soil on the bottom of your gutter, caused by the buildup of roof granules combined with the dust, dirt, and pollen.

That really all depends on the brand of cover you bought. The biggest problem in the gutter industry right now is that most homeowners have no idea what kind or brand of cover they bought. Because of that, there’s a lot of misinformation flying around. If you’re not talking directly to someone who deals with this on a daily basis, then you’re probably getting the wrong information.

The right gutter cover will work. But like with all things, the warranty is only as good as the company that backs it up. The most important thing you need to look into when purchasing a gutter guard, gutter cover, gutter topper, or any kind of these “lifetime warranty” gutter cover systems is the company servicing the covers and installing them, not the brand or the manufacturer. They aren’t the ones coming out to fix it if something goes wrong.

That’s why people trust and hire Honey Do Men. We stand behind our work and have done so for 20 years. When something goes wrong, we fix it.

Please see our first Q & A under Gutter Covers & Gutter Screens, above.

Absolutely. We warranty our work, not who lives there.

No.

The two most common problems with cedar roofs are: they aren’t ventilated properly and thus rot and have to be replaced, or the cedar roof wasn’t installed properly and tiles keep breaking or falling off.

On an installation level, the most common mistake made is the lack of a stainless steel ring shank nail being used to install the cedar shake roof tiles. A regular nail won’t hold, because it’s a smooth shaft and, combined with a really softwood like cedar, never holds. The ring shank is needed to grab and bite the soft cedarwood, almost like a screw would thread and hold fast to it. The stainless steel part is necessary because a regular nail will corrode as it is exposed to the elements on a daily basis. The shaft will deteriorate to almost nothing and snap, causing the tiles and brackets to fall off.

If this is your problem, there is little that can be done except re-nailing the entire roof with stainless steel ring shank nails. If ventilation, or lack thereof, is the problem, again there is little you can do without tearing off the whole roof and starting over.

We warranty the work, not the leak unless you are doing a full tear-out and replacement. Roof leaks and chimney leaks both can come from multiple areas. Typically we are only hired to repair one of many possible potential leak areas, usually the most obvious or the one in most need of repair. In most cases, this is all that is needed and typically will stop the leak. In rear cases, we do have to come back and do additional work to try and stop the leak which therefore incurs additional costs. Usually, we try to look at it as a phase one, phase two solution. Phase one is repairing the most obvious and easiest to determine problem areas. Phase two, if needed, is to come back and start looking at and repairing the less obvious areas. Either way, we will come back and continue to help till the leak is found, solved and resolved. If a full tear out and replacement is done, then we can warranty the work. If a partial repair or patchwork is done, then we can still warranty our work, but not the leak.

Yes. We can do full tear-out and replacements of most anything on or in your home. But we can also repair, band-aid and do temporary patchwork to help buy you time. I think that is one of the things that sets us apart from most everyone else. We love the small jobs just as much as the large ones. And we love finding ways to help bandage, temp fix or repair to help buy time just as much as we like replacing and tearing out and rebuilding. No matter what you want to have done, we can do it. And no matter what the budget, we will try to find a way to fit it.

We are a “Can Do” company. I tell people all the time, “I could put a man on the moon if you can write the check for it, I just understand that we don’t all have NASA’s budget to work with”. What I am trying to say is that whatever it is you want to be done, when other people are telling you no it can’t be done, we are telling you yes, there is always a way to get it done and we will find it for you. That’s the “It Can Be Done” attitude and mentality of Honey Do Men

We photo document every job that we do. Before and After photos. It is to protect us and our customers. Several times we get the question, “well how do I know it was done?” and quite simply, we pull up the photos of the job. Every job we have ever done for the last 20 years was photo-documented. Before the cloud existed, we printed them. Now we upload them into your customer portal so that you can see the photos and access copies of previous estimates, invoices and request a quote on new work. The pictures are for you and for us to show you that everything you hired us to do was done.

Yes and No. Yes, we will line itemized the jobs you ask us to price out for you. We won’t just give you one lump sum for everything you had us look at. If you need prices on a roof repair, new siding, a kitchen faucet, a light fixture replacement, and a hardwood floor repair; then you would get a price for each one of those line items. From there you can pick and choose what you want to have done now and what you want to have done later so you can budget and plan for the future. Or you can use our 0% financing and just get it all done at once.

That was the ‘No’ part to the line itemize questions above. No, we don’t break out per foot prices or labor and materials. We price by the job. This way if the job takes longer than expected, we won’t come asking for more money. Fair? And with the same respect, if a job takes less time than expected, the customer won’t come looking for a refund. Fair?

I never liked pricing jobs by the hour. I always felt uneasy when people came to work at my house that way. Why? Because I knew that if they milked the clock, then they get paid more and I get charged more. There is no incentive to work fast or get the job done quickly. As a customer, I never really knew how much the job was going to end up costing and I never really knew if I was being charged for the appropriate amount of time the job should take. It’s uncomfortable, it doesn’t build trust and I didn’t like it. So I don’t run my company that way. Instead, we charge by the job this way you know exactly what the job is going to cost before we start it and before you even hire us to do it.