Nickos Chimney Company

Getting his hands dirty – his face, too – proved to be a prosperous entry into business for George J. Spanos. When he started sweeping chimneys in Greensburg over 36 years ago, no one else in town was doing that dusty job. A Monongahela Valley native, he had done restaurant work in Florida, married a Greensburg girl, and started a family, but he was getting nowhere in terms of career. However, he and his wife Joanne purchased a decades-old Greensburg house and it contained – fatefully – six Victorian marble fireplaces. Desiring to make use of those quaint facilities, they began digging into loose bricks and debris, and found lots of mess and mystery. They sought help from masons and roofers, because there was not one chimney sweep in the yellow pages. “Nobody could advise us,” recalls Spanos. About the same time, however, his brother-in-law, Mark Opsitnick, spotted a magazine advertisement selling the notion that you, too, could become a chimney sweep in your spare time. Eventually Opsitnick and Spanos put up $1,000.00 each to buy vacuum equipment, tools, and do-it-yourself literature, and they formed – out of the final syllables of their names – “Nickos Chimney Sweeps".