About three months ago, a homeowner picked up a flyer in a hardware store in Chicago`s Old Town neighborhood.
At the time, she was gathering bids from workers to do the renovation of an apartment building she owned.
Dispirited by past dealings with tradespeople who she thought charged a lot for shoddy work and made her feel like ”some dumb broad,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, decided to call the phone number on the flyer that advertised Housecalls: Tradesman Referral Service Inc.
The call was answered by Marliss Turek, a 45-year-old attorney who founded Housecalls in July after talking with a lot of people like the homeowner, who don`t have the time or experience to find qualified
tradespeople to complete home repairs and remodeling jobs.
Turek bills her business as a ”marketing and bookkeeping firm,” which means that when clients call, she refers them to one of the 15 tradespeople in her network and then takes care of the billing if the workers are hired. In return for the promotional and accounting services, the workers pay Turek a commission.
What makes the company different from a listing service is that Turek doesn`t accept just any construction workers, she says; they have to be fair in their pricing, courteous, qualified and punctual.
That may sound too good to be true, but Turek says it isn`t. Her certainty comes from the fact that she has hired 12 of the 15 workers to do jobs in her own home.
Besides her present Gold Coast home, Turek has owned four other condominiums. ”I know as a homeowner the anxiety I go through when something goes wrong,” she says.
Doing the legwork
Turek eliminates that anxiety for her clients by using her research skills-gained over 20 years of interviewing tradespeople for repairs on her properties-to find the best workers and fairest prices. ”I found out that`s what people needed, someone to do the legwork,” she says. ”They avoid the worry, the distress, of not knowing where they can turn.”
Although looking for the right people sometimes takes days, Turek says the time spent is well worth it because she has saved herself and her clients thousands of dollars and many headaches.
”I am as an adult a person who loves value for my money,” she says.
Most of her 30 clients so far have been Chicago condominium and townhouse owners, who have varying degrees of experience dealing with tradespeople.
”It`s from people who don`t know what end of the hammer to use to people who are maybe skilled in the trades but don`t have the time,” Turek says.
Walter Fishleigh is a window specialist in Chicago who has gotten about 10 of the 75 jobs generated so far through Housecalls. ”It`s worth being in there (the referral service),” he says.
The other 14 Housecalls workers specialize in one or more of the following areas: carpentry, plumbing, heating and air conditioning, heavy-duty cleaning, chimney sweeping, roofing, interior and exterior painting, furniture repair, electrical work, wallpapering, tiling and room additions.
People can also call Housecalls if they need a security guard, a bathtub reglazer or someone to take care of their plants, pets and mail while they`re on vacation.
Pitching in
Turek remembers once having to do the last task herself because she hadn`t yet found a home care person. It turned out to be a tough job because the client had left special instructions for each of her 25 houseplants.
”I must have been an hour writing all about things (instructions) and learning all about the plants,” Turek says. ”I figured, `I can do this.` It took me forever. It was very hard to do it right, but we did it right.”
Turek has even escorted clients on shopping trips to the Merchandise Mart to pick out floor tiles, kitchen cabinets and other building materials. She also performs real estate closings.
Through Housecalls, the homeowner mentioned earlier found a competent painter who came in with the lowest estimate out of about five bids.
”Everyone else was just miles higher,” she says.
Mark and Kim Weinstein also turned to Turek, their neighbor, to find someone to finish remodeling their kitchen, which was 80 percent completed when their contractor just stopped showing up, Kim Weinstein says.
”I just trust her judgment and the people she`s picked,” Weinstein says of Turek. ”You know she`s got experience dealing with these people.”
Varied background
Who knows but that Turek may have been a tradesperson herself had her high school in Miami Beach broken the no-girls-allowed rule and let her take shop class as she requested?
Instead of going on to prove the high school`s mistake in judgment by becoming an electrician or builder, Turek went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and received a master of fine arts degree. Following a short stint at Grey Advertising in New York City after graduation, she came to Chicago, where she was born and lived until age 13.
Turek continued in advertising for nine years with the now-defunct Kenyon and Eckhardt before pursuing a law degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology Kent College of Law.
Turek says of her newest career, ”It`s the art and the advertising and the real estate and the business representation and the repair work I`ve done all rolled into one.”
