Best of Philly: Home Services You Never Knew You Needed
Photo by Colin Lenton for Philadelphia Magazine.
Best of Philly 2016 is now online as well as at newsstands. Check out the best in home services as well as the rest of the best in food, drink, shopping, beauty, health, fitness, fun and games.
Figuring out who should handle your most pressing house needs (moving, junk removal, housecleaning, etc.) can be a struggle. Word of mouth only gets you so far, and you can barely trust Yelp reviews nowadays. Enter these Best of Philly winners — they’re the movers and shakers, the contractors and cleaners that your home has been waiting for. 100 percent Philly Mag tried and tested, here are the home services you need in your life ASAP:
ALL-AROUND MUSCLE
For $25 per person, per hour, you can hire a group of players from Philly’s Women’s Rugby Football Club (pictured above) to clean out your garage, paint your picket fence, or move your couch to the third floor — so why the hell wouldn’t you? They’re available all day Sunday plus evenings on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
URBAN KITCHEN CONTRACTOR: Michael Quinn Contracting
Mike Quinn has won the devotion of entire neighborhoods in Philly, renovating and upgrading kitchens for one ecstatic client after the next. The appeal is threefold. First: He finishes on time. Second: He finishes at cost. Third: He finishes with no drama. In other words, he’s a total pro who expertly deals with the space constraints and quirks in old rowhomes. He does great work with bathrooms, too.
MOVING CONCIERGE
File this one under Services You Never Knew You Desperately Needed. Via start-up Pad Porter, Wharton grad Nonya Collier and her crew handle pretty much every moving task you could ever hope to outsource: booking the movers; packing and unpacking; stocking your new fridge; cleaning the old place; even waiting for the Comcast guy. Services are arranged a la carte, with prices starting at a (totally worth it) $25 an hour.
FURNITURE MAKEOVERS: The Restoration Studio
Husband-and-wife team Rod and Jen Keyser have been picked three times to restore parts of the beloved, one-of-a-kind, 112-year-old Wanamaker Organ. (Worth: $57 million.) So it’s safe to say you can trust them to make your great-grandmother’s armoire — or that Craigslist fixer-upper — sing again, too. Their online gallery of before-and-after shots will take your breath away.
JUNK REMOVER
Demolition debris. Old furniture. Yard waste. Broken computers. Dead appliances. Trash, broken crap, whatever: Junk Be Gone will pick it up, get it out, donate what they can, recycle what’s left over — and they’ll do it on a weekend, in the evening, sometimes on the same day you call. They even sweep up after they’re done.
MOVERS: Mambo Shakers
So many Philly Mag staffers use these many-time Best Of winners — a loose compendium of artists who moonlight as van-masters — that we’re thinking of putting them on retainer.
WINDOW-BOX DESIGN
If your neighbors’ verdant window boxes make you and your scattering of marigolds feel inadequate, consider a subscription from Bucks County-based Enliven Planters. Their garden designers — the same brains behind the beautiful boxes at Vedge and Russet — will come at the start of every season to create a customized box or planter that can hold its own against any of the other stunners in your neighborhood.
GREEN HOUSECLEANING: Clenz
These pros scrub your home the way you know you should but never actually do, using only green products and focusing on nitty-gritty details like baseboard crevices and that gnarly space behind the toilet. They also offer the rather elusive services of eco-friendly rug and upholstery cleaning and work in both the city and select ‘burbs.
Published as “Best of Philly 2016” in the August issue of Philadelphia magazine.
Join us in the heart of the city on August 4th for an evening of award-winning food, summer cocktails and dancing under the stars in celebration of the winners at the Best of Philly Soirée. Get details and ticket information here.
