Leaving the house for a year in Lithuania: the repairs to do first

Sooner or later many diaspora families try it: a year in Lithuania. A sabbatical, a parent in Kaunas who needs help, children who should hear the language every day rather than once a week. The paperwork gets all the attention, the passports, the school letters, the residence forms. The house you leave behind gets a weekend at the end, and that is usually where things go wrong.

Before you hand the keys to a tenant, a relative or a neighbour who will "keep an eye on it", the small repairs matter more than you think. The kind of handyman Lexington KY homeowners book for a list of small jobs is often the right first call. What follows is the order I would do things in, separated into what to do now and what to plan for.

What a year away asks of the house

A house that is lived in gets noticed. A dripping tap is heard, a loose step is felt, a sticking window gets opened anyway. A house that is let or left empty loses that daily attention, and small faults have months to grow before anyone mentions them.

The question to ask is not "what is broken" but "what will become a problem if nobody touches it for a year". In a climate with humid summers, cold snaps in winter and plenty of rain in between, which describes Kentucky well enough, that list usually includes gutters, seals around windows and doors, outside steps and railings, and anything that lets water in.

There is also the question of who will live there. A tenant needs a house that works and is safe, with nothing they have to work around. A relative house-sitting will be more forgiving, but will also be less likely to ring you about the small things, because they do not want to bother you while you are abroad.

If you are letting the house, there is a further point. A lease usually means the landlord is responsible for keeping certain things in working order, and the details depend on the state and the lease itself. That is a question for a local lawyer or a letting agent, not for a column, but the practical upshot is simple: whatever is half broken now will become a phone call to Lithuania at an inconvenient hour. Ask yourself which faults you would rather fix in person this spring than arrange by email from a kitchen in Vilnius in January.

It also helps to think about the seasons you will miss. Leave in summer and you will be away for autumn leaves, the first frosts and the spring storms. Each of those has its own small jobs, and someone needs to know about them.

The order to do things in

I like lists, and this is a job that suits one. Start three or four months before you fly.

1. Walk the house with a notebook. Every room, the garage, the outside. Write down anything loose, sticking, dripping, cracked or peeling, however small.
2. Sort the list into three piles. Small repairs a handyman can do in a visit or two; bigger work that needs a contractor or a licensed trade; and things that can wait until you are back.
3. Book the small jobs first. They are quick to arrange and they clear the list fast. Doors that do not latch, cabinet hinges, caulking around the bath, a wobbly handrail, a missing tile, a fence board, smoke alarm batteries.
4. Get the bigger work assessed. Anything involving the roof, the electrics, gas, the water heater or the structure goes to a licensed professional. You do not need to do it all before you leave, but you need to know what it is.
5. Decide what waits. A kitchen remodel or a new deck can wait a year. A leak cannot.
6. Do a final walk two weeks before departure with whoever will look after the house, and show them where the water stop valve and the main switches are.

Two-country note: In Lithuania, many people live in flats where the building's administrator or a residents' association deals with roofs, stairwells and pipes, so a household's own repair list is shorter. Families who grew up that way are sometimes surprised by how much of an American house is the owner's own job. Village houses are the exception, and there the rule was always that whoever in the family was handiest fixed it, for better or worse.

Who does what

Split the jobs early so that nobody discovers on the last weekend that they were supposed to do something.

You, before you go: the walk-through, the list, the bookings, and gathering everything in one folder: who did which repair, appliance manuals, and the contact details of every tradesperson you used.

A handyman: the small, varied jobs that do not need a specialist licence. Good ones work through a list efficiently, tell you when something is beyond a handyman's scope and suggest who to call instead. When you book, send the list in writing and ask which items they can do and which they would pass on. A company that also does general contracting can often take the bigger items later, which saves explaining the house twice.

Licensed trades: anything electrical, gas, roofing at height or structural. Ask them to explain what they checked and what they found. Keep the paperwork.

The person looking after the house: a monthly walk round, running the taps in unused bathrooms, checking for leaks after storms, and a photo or two sent to you. Agree this in writing, even between family. It saves awkward conversations at Christmas.

One more thing about the person looking after the house: give them permission, in advance, to call a tradesperson for an urgent problem without waiting for you to answer. With a seven-hour time difference, a burst pipe at breakfast in Kentucky is a burst pipe after dinner in Lithuania, and waiting for you to wake up or reply is how a small leak becomes a ceiling. Leave them a short list of who to ring for what, and a sensible limit on what they can approve without asking.

What it costs in effort

I will not guess at prices. Those depend on the house and the job, and any honest tradesperson will give you a quote after seeing it. What I can describe is the effort.

The walk-through takes an afternoon. Sorting the list takes an evening. Booking takes longer than you expect, because good tradespeople are busy, and that is why the list needs to start months, not weeks, before the flight. The visits themselves are usually short. The real cost is the scheduling, the time off work to let people in and the two or three Saturdays you will spend on it.

There is one cost people forget: the cost of not doing it. A small leak left for a year in an empty house is not a small leak any more. Neither is a gutter full of leaves above a basement.

It is worth adding the effort of coming home, too. A house that was looked after properly needs a weekend of airing out and a walk round. A house that was not can mean your first month back is spent waiting for repairs instead of unpacking, while the children try to remember where their English schoolbooks went.

Before the next visit

Keep the repair folder in two places: one copy in the house for whoever looks after it, and one scanned copy on your phone in Lithuania. Note what was done, by whom and when, and put a reminder in your calendar for a month after you return to walk the house again with the same notebook. The forms will still be waiting for you at the migration office, but the house, at least, should be in order.