By Pat Dillon
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000

Finding the right business to tackle your never-ending list of home maintenance upgrades and repairs isn't easy. Here's a top-notch list of professionals you can count on. How do we know? They come highly recommended.

We had more service guys coming in and out of our century-old country fixer-upper than flies from our neighbor's dairy farm. When the first spring downpour arrived, so did our own cement pond -- water measuring two feet in the cellar. That very day I came home to a note from Lenny, our Amerigas guy. It said he'd been servicing my house for years and figured we'd have problems. He had let himself in to turn off the furnace and hot water heater, hoped I didn't mind.

Mind??? We'd moved here from Chicago where "service" was a euphemism for "if (not even when) we get around to it."

But there are the other stories.

There was the house painter I never saw again after he gambled away my $600 down payment, and the rough carpenter who convinced me he could build the bathroom cabinet we badly needed for holiday company -- another no-show. And I'd cut him a $600 check, too. Think I'd learn?

Months later I paid my new favorite and reliable cabinet and furniture maker, Bob Arthur of Arthur's Craftsmanship & Design, to repair and finish a half-built cabinet we finally received from the other guy after a relentless pursuit. It cost more in the end, but I got what I paid for. Sometimes you just have to wait for good service, and knowing the good guys from the ones who just try to be typically comes by word of mouth. I waited a year for a carpenter who built my addition because the recommendation was so strong. I have waited even longer than that for Bob Arthur, another neighbor recommendation, to build us bookcases and cabinets in our present home. Patience is sometimes a renovating homeowner's only path to quality work, if not shear sanity.

But some things just can't wait. Here's a short list of quality home maintenance professionals for everything from installing new gear to just getting it up and running.

Custom Furniture

I've never been disappointed with my experiences buying custom-made upholstered furniture at Fine Designs. I've lugged floor room samples home to see if they fit, and when my couch didn't arrive in time for Christmas, they delivered a loaner.

American TV and Appliance scored big in this category, garnering the respect of my friend Gloria when two men arrived on time to deliver her new bedroom furniture. They set up quickly and carried the existing furniture downstairs, took her old bed frame apart, removed it, cut a hole into the new armoire for her TV and wired it up without a word.

Furnace

When I thought my oil ran dry in frigid weather, a friendly service guy from Middleton Farmers Co-op showed up and found a full tank, then fixed a furnace problem (not his job), drained the lines (not his job) and got our heat back on task.

R. A. Heating & Air Conditioning comes when you need them and stays 'til the job gets done. Their team effortlessly fixed an ancient radiant heat leak that others said couldn't be repaired.

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