Rotted exterior trim
Cornerboards, window sills, door casings, water tables, and the bottom foot of every piece of trim on the weather side of the house. Wood rots from the end grain and from wherever water sits, and on a Springfield colonial that means the bottom of the cornerboards and the sills of the north-facing windows. I cut out the rot, treat what remains, and replace with primed wood or PVC trim depending on the location and how much water it will see.
PVC has its place on the ground-level pieces that take splash from the driveway and the snow pile. Higher up, where it will be seen, I usually match the original wood profile so the house keeps its character.
Fascia, soffit, and rafter tails
The fascia is the board the gutter hangs on, and when a gutter has been overflowing from ice dams for a few winters, the fascia is the first thing to go. Behind it the rafter tails soak up the water and go soft, and the soffit falls open, and then the squirrels move in. This is the repair I do most often as a carpenter, and it is nearly always connected to a roofing problem above it.
The fix is to remove the gutter, cut back the rotted rafter tails and sister on new ones, replace the fascia and soffit with proper venting, and rehang the gutter with the right pitch. If the ice dam cause is not fixed at the same time, the new fascia has the same life as the old one.
Porch steps, railings, and columns
Front steps that have gone spongy, railings that wobble, and porch columns that have rotted at the base where they sit in the snow. On the triple-deckers these are three stories of the same problem stacked up. I rebuild steps with proper stringers and closed risers, set new columns on standoff bases that keep the end grain out of the water, and build railings that meet code height and spacing.
A column that has rotted at the bottom is often carrying the porch roof on nothing but the paint. I jack and support the beam before the column comes out, every time.
Doors, windows, and the things that stick
Doors that drag, windows that will not open, storm doors that slam, thresholds that let the wind through. In a house that has settled, the openings are no longer square and the fix is a combination of planing, re-hanging, and sometimes rebuilding the jamb. I also replace individual windows, install new exterior doors with a proper sill pan, and repair the sash cords and weights in old double-hungs when the owner wants to keep them.
None of this is glamorous. All of it makes a house work the way it should.
Interior framing and structural repairs
Sagging floors over a basement, a header that was never installed over a widened doorway, a stair stringer that has cracked, a joist that a plumber cut through decades ago. I add posts and beams in the basement, sister joists, install proper headers, and rebuild stairs. These jobs usually start when someone notices a door that will not close or a floor that slopes toward the middle of the house.