The tap that drips, the door that has to be lifted to shut, the cupboard hinge that gave up, the towel rail that came out of the wall, the shower silicone gone black. One thing, fixed properly, without having to find a trade willing to come out for half an hour of work.
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Small repairs are the single jobs that are too small for a specialist trade and too annoying to live with: dripping taps, doors and windows that stick, broken fittings and handles, shelves and rails that have pulled out of the wall, and shower or worktop resealing. Handyman Algarve quotes small repairs in the Algarve for free, in English or Portuguese, with the price known before anyone comes out.
Sealant is the repair people put off longest and the one with the worst consequences, so it is worth its own section. Three things shorten its life in the Algarve. Bathrooms in houses that are let get heavy use and little ventilation, which keeps the joint permanently damp. Buildings move with the temperature swing between a February night and an August afternoon, and a rigid bead cracks where a flexible one would not. And a great deal of silicone here was applied over the old bead rather than instead of it, which traps moisture and mould underneath from day one.
Doing it properly is unglamorous and specific: the old sealant is cut out completely, the joint is cleaned back and left genuinely dry, the right sealant is used for a wet area, and it is left to cure before the shower is used again. Done that way a joint lasts years. Done as a bead squeezed over black mould, it looks acceptable for a fortnight and then looks worse than it started.
Some things that look small are the visible end of something else. A tap that drips from the body rather than the spout, a wall fixing that will not hold because the plaster behind it is damp, a door that suddenly sticks in one corner: each is a symptom worth naming rather than patching. If a repair turns out to be that kind, you are told what it actually is and what the real fix involves, and you decide. The alternative, tightening it and leaving, is quicker for everyone and honest to nobody.
As of 2026, a small repair is quoted as a callout plus the time and any materials. Because the callout does not shrink with the job, the practical advice is the same one every trade here will give you: if you have three or four small things, send them together and pay one visit instead of three. What else moves the price is whether materials have to be bought first, how accessible the repair is, and whether the finish needs making good afterwards.
One photograph is usually enough to quote a small repair accurately, and it saves a diagnostic visit you would otherwise pay for. See how it works for the process from request to finished job.
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Dripping taps and running toilets, followed by doors and windows that no longer close, then silicone that has gone black around a shower or a worktop. None of them stops a house working, which is exactly why they are left, and all three cost more the longer they run: a running toilet on a metered supply is a bill, and failed silicone is a damp wall waiting to happen.
A single repair is priced as a callout plus the work and any materials, and the callout is the part that does not change with the size of the job. That is why one repair on its own costs proportionally more than the same repair as part of a list. As of 2026, Handyman Algarve quotes small repairs free and up front, and will say when a job is small enough to be worth saving for a visit that includes others.
The black is mould growing in and under the sealant, feeding on soap residue in a joint that never fully dries. Surface cleaning helps early on and does nothing once the growth is inside the silicone, because the staining is below the surface. At that stage the honest fix is to strip the old bead out completely and reseal, which takes a couple of hours and lasts years if it is done properly.
Roughly every five years in a bathroom in regular use, and sooner in a house that is let, because heavy use with little ventilation is what shortens it. The signs to act on are black staining that will not clean off, a bead lifting at an edge, or any gap you can see daylight or movement through. Resealing then is a small job; resealing after the water has been getting behind the tray for a year is not.
A small repair is the one thing that broke today. A handyman visit is a list of jobs cleared in one go. The work is the same and the pricing logic is the same, but if you have more than two or three items it is cheaper to send them together, because you pay one callout instead of three. If your request turns out to be the second kind, you are told so rather than quoted three times.
Anything caused by water that ran unseen: a leak inside a wall, a terrace that let rain into the structure, or a shower that has been draining behind the tray instead of into it. The repair is rarely the expensive part. Replacing the plaster, the floor and the joinery the water reached is. That is the whole argument for dealing with the small version early.