Assess first, then reopen
Spring maintenance has a different shape from autumn’s. The fall list is a countdown — things stop being possible in a known order. Spring is the opposite: nothing has a deadline, but half the work depends on information you do not have yet.
So the list starts with a survey. One walk around the outside, one trip into the attic, one into the basement. What that survey turns up determines what you book, and booking is the part with a queue.
The rest follows in dependency order. Water goes back on after the last frost, not before. Cooling gets sorted before the first hot week rather than during it. Outdoor work happens once it is warm enough for caulk and finish to cure.
The spigot check
This is the one thing on the page worth doing today.
Turn the outdoor tap on.
Put your palm over the outlet.
Can you stop the flow? → the pipe behind it is split. Shut it off. Call a plumber.
Water keeps coming? → it is fine.
A pipe that burst in January has not leaked a drop, because the tap has been closed since October. The first time it leaks is the moment you open the tap, and if the split is inside the wall — which it usually is, because that is the cold part — the first sign is water coming through a ceiling downstairs.
Doing this test with your hand over the outlet takes ten seconds and turns a catastrophic discovery into an ordinary repair.
What winter actually damages
| Where | What to look for | Why it matters now |
|---|---|---|
| Roof | Lifted, cracked or missing shingles; granules in the downspout splash | A roofer will come out in April. In July they are on a three-week backlog. |
| Gutters | Hangers pulled from the fascia, open seams, sections now draining backwards | Ice loading bends them. A backwards gutter concentrates water at the wall. |
| Foundation | New cracks; soil pulled away from the wall | Freeze-thaw moves soil every year. Photograph cracks with something for scale. |
| Attic | Dark staining or rust on nail tips under the sheathing | Warm air leaked up all winter. This is the cause of ice dams, found in spring. |
| Deck | Soft wood at the ledger and post bases | Where decks actually fail, and where snow sat longest. |
| Concrete | Spalling and new cracks in the drive and walk | De-icing salt plus freeze-thaw. Seal before it gets worse. |
Photograph everything you find, with a tape measure or a coin in the frame. The photograph is worth more than the note, and next spring you will want to know whether the crack moved.
The attic has a deadline
Nothing else in spring is time-limited, but this is. You want to be in the attic while it is still cool enough to spend twenty minutes there, which in most climates means before the middle of May.
What you are looking for is evidence of the winter that just happened: dark staining on the underside of the roof deck, rust on the points of the roofing nails, matted or displaced insulation, and daylight anywhere it should not be. All of that says warm, moist air from the house was getting into the attic — which is the same mechanism that produces ice dams, and the same one that will cook your air conditioning bill in August.
Also check that the soffit vents are not buried under insulation pushed into the eaves. That single mistake causes both the winter problem and the summer one.
Spring cleaning is not spring maintenance
Worth separating, because they get merged constantly and the merged list is too long to finish.
Maintenance is the roof, the water, the mechanical systems and the structure — things that fail expensively and quietly. Cleaning is the windows, the closets and the garage, and nothing on that list gets worse if it waits until June.
If you have a weekend, spend it on the survey and the bookings. The windows will still be there.
The list you print is not a weekend. It is six to eight weeks of two-hour Saturdays. The survey at the top is the part that has to happen soon; everything under it can be paced.