Donnie Shevlin could barely squeeze through the small hole in the floor that accessed a crawl space in a Smithton house last week. It was cold, dark and dirty down there, but he emerged with a smile.

"No dry rotting, no collapsed wood and the foundation looks solid," he reported to the potential homeowner.

Shevlin is the owner of Sure Home Appraisal and Inspection, based in Collinsville. And last week's home inspection is one of about 4,500 that Shevlin has done in his almost 10 years in the business.

"It's a lot of very hard work," Shevlin said of his profession. "You have to have a good knowledge base, you have to have personality, you have to have communication skills, you have to represent yourself well for Realtors because they're the ones who put you in front of customers — and you have to have a very good eye for what you do."

Shevlin, 50, used that keen eye last week to do an inspection of the 980-square-foot, two bedroom and one-and-a-half bathroom house. It took about two hours for Shevlin to examine the condition of the roof, garage, kitchen, living room, bedrooms, bathrooms, attic, crawl space, plumbing, furnace, electrical and other mechanics of the house. From that examination, he'll produce a 20-page report to the client.

"I cover 500 points of the home starting from the basement to the roof line," he said. "I'll walk around the outside of the house two or three times trying to catch all the items I'm required to inspect by state of Illinois."

Shevlin holds the state-required home inspection license, which took 80 hours of training to achieve. Shevlin, who is on the Collinsville Planning Commission, has also been trained in home appraisal.

Shevlin said his main goal is to give potential homeowners the information they need to make a home-buying decision.

"You're going to have me look at it so you can make a better judgment on whether you want to buy this home or not," Shevlin said. "I may find a half-dozen minor things or one big major thing."

It was good news for the Smithton client (who did not want to be named). After consulting with her about a water shut-off valve in the bathroom, the setting on the humidifier, and a "double-tap" on her electrical panel, Devlin said he didn't find anything major.

"I don't make recommendations (on whether to buy a house or not)," he said. "But when a house needs a lot of work and we're doing a lot of writing on our report, we call it a 'writer.' In this particular case, I'm not finding it to be a writer."

Contact reporter Ramona C. Sanders at 618-344-0264, ext. 136