What does your castle need?

Yearly members choose between The Pool Room (10 visits for $2,400), The Serenity (20 visits for $4,200) and Bonnie Doon (30 visits for $5,700). Prices are in Australian dollars and include GST. Your year starts when you add payment details, any time after your free walk-through. Schools and local businesses are priced on the scope of work after a site walk-through.

A standard visit is two hours. All labour is included, with no call-out fees and no per-visit charges for your regular tradie. You also get a maintenance plan written for your home and a WhatsApp group where the whole history of your home lives.

A yearly membership is what lets us give you one dedicated tradie who actually knows your house. We employ our tradies properly and each one looks after a limited group of homes. Your commitment is what makes that possible.

It also turns home care from reactive to proactive. Instead of waiting for something to break, your tradie is already across the gutters, the seals, the smoke alarms and the hot water system.

Everything a skilled handyperson can legally do: carpentry, patching and painting, doors and locks, flat-packs, fixtures, fences, decks, tap washers, silicone, mounting, minor plaster, gutters and general maintenance.

In Australia, most electrical work and plumbing legally requires a licensed electrician or plumber. When a job crosses that line, we line up one of our vetted partners, coordinate it for you and pass on member pricing.

Through a WhatsApp group set up just for your home, with you, your tradie and the Castle Keep office in it. Post the jobs, a photo if it helps, and the days that suit you. We reply with a confirmed time, and your tradie posts photos when the work is done. Over time the group becomes the full record of your home.

Don't use WhatsApp? Text or email works the same way. And if you'd rather talk, call us. A real person in Melbourne answers.

You're covered by our 30-day serenity guarantee. If we're not the right fit in your first 30 days and we can't make it right, we refund your unused visits.

After 30 days memberships are non-refundable and you have 12 months to use your visits. Up to four unused visits can roll over into your next year on request.

Your tradie carries the basics: screws, silicone, washers. For bigger parts you can buy them yourself or ask us to research and buy them for a flat $15 per visit that needs parts. Anything over $100 is approved by you in the group first.

Bayside and south-east Melbourne. That's the Bayside suburbs from Brighton and Hampton through Sandringham, Black Rock and Beaumaris to Highett and Cheltenham; the Kingston suburbs of Moorabbin, Mentone, Parkdale, Mordialloc, Aspendale, Edithvale and Chelsea; Caulfield, Elsternwick, Bentleigh, McKinnon, Ormond, Carnegie and Murrumbeena; and the inner south from St Kilda and Elwood through Balaclava, Ripponlea, Middle Park and Albert Park to South Melbourne and Port Melbourne.

Enter your postcode in the walk-through form and we'll tell you straight away whether you're in the launch area. If you're just outside it, we'll note your interest and let you know when we reach you.

Enough not to build the veggie patch on top of it. In older Melbourne suburbs, the ground around a house often carries lead from decades of flaking paint and leaded petrol, especially along the drip line of the walls and near the street. It's fine to live with, as long as you know where it is.

So before we dig a garden bed, lay a sandpit or set up a kids' play area, your tradie can arrange a simple soil test. Macquarie University's VegeSafe program will test garden soil for a small donation. If a patch comes back high, we plan around it: raised beds with clean soil, mulch or turf over bare ground, and no digging where it counts. The same goes for old paint. We swab-test before sanding on any pre-1970 home and never dry-sand a positive result.

No. We're just enormous fans of a film about a family who loved their home and refused to let anyone take it away. Castle Keep isn't affiliated with the film or its makers. We reckon a home is worth looking after, and that the person who looks after it should turn up when they say they will.