Stairs & Trim in West University Place, TX

West U got its name from geography. Ben Hooper, a former governor of Tennessee, began selling lots here in 1917, west of what was then Rice Institute and is now Rice University. Houston was slow to run power lines out this far, which was a big reason the neighborhood incorporated as its own city, officially dated January 2, 1924. In the 1920s Lillian Nicholson, a Rice English major, named many of the streets after authors from an English literature book, which is why so many West U street signs read like a reading list.

The city is small: 2.00 square miles, all land, about 14,955 residents in 2020, with typical lots of about 5,000 square feet. The original houses were mid-century bungalows and cottages. Then the city loosened its development rules, and in the 15 years ending in 2002 roughly half of the existing houses were torn down and replaced, many with Georgian-style homes that fill much more of the lot.

That is the most useful fact for anyone planning floors here. West U is not mainly a city of 1930s cottages anymore. It is a city of homes built in the late 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, now old enough that their original floors are worn, dated, or simply not what the current owner would have picked. The questions we hear follow from that.

Should the whole downstairs be one floor? Often, yes. Homes from that rebuild era tend to change materials room to room. Running one engineered hardwood floor through the entry, living, dining and kitchen makes a narrow-lot house feel wider. Engineered wood is the right choice on a concrete slab; it has a real wood surface over a stable core that handles Houston humidity far better than solid boards.

Can new wood match the wood we already have? This comes up when one floor is being replaced and another is staying, often upstairs and downstairs. We bring samples to compare species, color, sheen and plank width against what you have, and we plan the transition at the stairs so it reads as one house.

What about the stairs? Many West U homes have a front staircase that sets the tone for the entry. We install new treads, nosing and risers, or new stair carpet, and the baseboard and quarter round that finish the rooms around them.

What about water? West U is not Bellaire, but it is not dry either. Hurricane Harvey flooded 116 West U homes in 2017, and a 2019 city study found that most of the city has limited drainage capacity. The city has major drainage projects underway, including a new storm sewer trunkline on the west side to Brays Bayou and work on Poor Farm Ditch, which the county first dredged in 1928 and widened in 1954. For ground-floor rooms that see water risk, such as laundry rooms, mudrooms and baths, porcelain tile or waterproof luxury vinyl plank is a practical choice, and we put a crack isolation membrane under tile because Houston-area clay keeps slabs moving.

One honest boundary: if you have an older wood floor that just needs to be brought back, that is not our work. We're an installation company, and we don't resurface existing floors. If you want new floors, we will bring the samples to you, measure while we are there and give you a free in-home estimate. No showroom, no pressure, no Saturday spent driving between stores.