Contractor in Avis, PA.
Yes. Avis is well inside the area I cover, about fifteen minutes from my place in Lock Haven, which sits southwest of the borough on 220. I'm Thomas Darby, a registered Pennsylvania home improvement contractor, PA HIC #PA2199962. The work I take in the borough is mostly carpentry and repair on the old railroad-era frame houses, metal roof leaks, and decks and porches.
Avis is a railroad town. The New York Central started building its shops here around 1901, and by 1908 Avis and the neighboring Oak Grove settlement had been chartered together as one borough. Those shops touched off a building boom, and it left the street grid you still drive today, with Central Avenue running east and west through the middle of it and Brady Street the line where a West Central address becomes an East Central one. Jersey Shore Steel has been working out of the old locomotive shop since 1938.
A good share of the borough's houses date to that boom, and they fail in the same places. Porch posts go soft at the base where the decking has been holding water against them for eighty years. Band joists and sills turn punky behind siding that looks fine from the street, and by the time a door stops latching the trouble is usually underneath it rather than in the frame. Once rot has gone past cosmetic the structural repair is still mine to do. I fabricated and set a plywood box beam in Lock Haven to carry a roof load across a wide opening.
Metal roofing is common at this end of the county, and it almost never fails in the middle of a panel. It's the ridge cap and the gasketed screws, and then the rubber vent boots that dry out and split years before the metal does. I ran that repair in Loganton this year: hose-tested the roof with a spotter inside to find the real entry point, resealed the ridge, swapped the boot and the suspect fasteners, then rebuilt the stained ceiling below from the insulation out.
Avis sits about a mile back from the West Branch, up on the north side of the valley, so the water that gets into houses here comes off the roof or off the grade rather than out of the river. Oil is still the most common heat in Avis and the township around it, so I get asked about mini-splits fairly often. Decks are the other steady ask, and on lots this narrow the siting is a harder problem than the framing.
- PermitsAvis is its own borough with its own ordinances, and on lots this narrow setbacks come up more often than they do elsewhere in the county. I confirm what a job needs before I put a number on it, then file for the permit myself.
- Travelabout 15 minutes from Lock Haven
- QuotesWritten quote within 48 hours
What I do in Avis
Nearest completed work
No published case studies in Avis yet — the closest documented jobs are in Jersey Shore, Mill Hall and Lock Haven. Same contractor, same standards, a few miles up the road.
Avis questions
Is Avis inside the area you cover?
Comfortably inside it. Fifteen minutes from my place, straight down 220 and off at 150 or 44, so an Avis job goes on the calendar the same as one three streets from my house. I come look at the work in person before I price it, and you will have that price in writing inside two days. Nothing is owed until you have read it and told me to start.
My metal roof is leaking somewhere and I can't tell where. Can you find it?
Usually, but not from the ground. I get up on the roof and run a hose test in sections with somebody inside calling out the second the drip starts, because water tends to enter well uphill of the stain you are looking at. Once I know where it is coming in, I fix that spot and then put the ceiling underneath back together. If the panels themselves are sound, you do not need a new roof.
Can I even put a deck on a lot this small?
Usually. Most Avis lots are narrow, so the real questions are where the stairs land, how close you're allowed to build to the property line, and whether I can get lumber into the back without walking it through your neighbor's yard. I work all that out before I quote, and where a permit is required I take care of it. The framing is the easy part.
Is my house too old for you to work on?
No. A lot of Avis housing goes back to the railroad-shop boom of the early 1900s, and old frame construction is normal work for me. Nothing is plumb, nothing is square, the sheathing is often boards rather than sheet goods, and there are surprises behind the siding. I price what I can see and tell you straight if opening it up changes the number.
We heat with oil. Is a mini-split actually worth it in a house like ours?
Oil is still the most common heat in Avis and the township around it, so this comes up a lot. A mini-split won't replace an oil furnace on the coldest nights unless it's sized for that, but a hyper-heat unit keeps making heat well below zero and can carry the shoulder seasons cheap. The hyper-heat system I installed in Lock Haven is exactly that kind of unit.