Back when Santa Fe real estate was booming, Honey Do Home Repairs owner Douglas Maahs had a lot of jobs remodeling large homes for affluent owners.

These days, thanks to the decline in the housing market combined with a severe recession, much of his business is now smaller jobs — mostly portals, kitchens and bathrooms.

Contractors all over Santa Fe are dealing with the same downturn by taking on jobs they perhaps wouldn't have done before.

Most have cut employees' hours or even laid them off because there's less work to do.

Honey Do employs about a dozen people, well below the 33 who worked there in the height of the real-estate boom in 2007.

"Basically from mid-September last year to mid-May, it's been totally sporadic and unpredictable," Maahs said. And contrary to past experiences, "we haven't seen the kitchen and bath improvements lead the way to bigger jobs the way they normally do. By and large, people are fixing stuff themselves."

In many ways, "we're lucky because Honey Do is branded as a home-repair company, which gives us an opportunity at least to look at jobs first and then make a quick response," Maahs said. "That's what's made it possible for us to exist since 1997."

Jerry Barber, owner of Madera Builders, is also "doing a lot of renovation and remodeling" and building fewer homes.

"It's taking longer to develop larger projects," he said. "Things are still in the works, but every thing has slowed down. People are being more cautious."

In the past, Barber said he would do a luxury spec home every three or four years, but "not in this market — things have dried up."

Barber also laid off three of his "less experienced guys. Basically they were put at half time," he said. He now has four people working for him who are "staying pretty busy."

Two other small general contractors, Jim Gill and Steve Gibson, have started what they call "a cottage industry" — they're building pine caskets and selling them to undertakers and others.

The two saw a niche in the funeral industry after hearing of a family that was facing a bill of more than $8,000 for a casket from a funeral home.

"We said, 'This is ridiculous,' " Gill said. "This is a way of keeping money local and a way to doing a green business."

Carson Casket Co. charges from $350 to $400 for a coffin. "It's a pine box, Gill said. "People can do what they want with it. It allows people to do creative things."

(A coffin is typically a rectangular box used for burial while a casket is a burial container tapered at both ends. The latter is also known as a "toe pincher," Gill said.)

General contractor Michael Ossorgin, who has been licensed since 1978, said he has "definitely scaled back" in the recession. "Things are definitely thin, and you have to be very clever in purchasing "building materials.

Ossorgin's crew "is about half of what it usually is," he said.

Business right now involves "a lot of medical work — small remodels for doctors," he said. "Or we're plastering their homes and stuff like that."

Among the benefits of the slowdown is the fact that workers "are a more grateful and polite and nice," Ossorgin said. "There's a lot more 'thank yous' and a lot more appreciation."

Contact Bob Quick at 986-3011 or bobquick@sfnewmexican.com.