Baseboard and trim installation in San Mateo

Matching trim in Baywood and Aragon homes

Baywood was subdivided in 1927 on the former Parrott Estate, and the neighboring Aragon Tract opened display houses in 1929 in Spanish Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival styles. Trim in houses that age was milled to profiles that lumberyards do not always stock now, and old brittle boards rarely come off a wall in one piece. When new floors go in, the baseboard question comes up right away.

We bring profile samples and say what is close, and when nothing on the shelf matches, we talk through replacing the whole room. Coped inside corners, rather than plain miters, stay tight as the wood moves through the year. Nails are set and filled, and the joint along the wall is caulked before paint. A close photo of the board's top edge, sent by text, is enough to start.

Worth knowing about San Mateo

• About 70.4% of the city's 42,641 housing units were built before 1980 and 9.5% in 1939 or earlier. The 1950s are the largest single building decade, at 21.3%.
• Hillsdale, started in 1939 and resumed in the late 1940s, has one-story Minimal Traditional and Post-War Minimal houses. Shoreview built 1,200 homes in 1949 alone.
• 19th Avenue Park is an Eichler tract built from 1953 to 1955. The City describes Eichlers as post-and-beam houses, often with a central atrium or courtyard and clerestory windows.