Handyman in Old Southwest, Columbia
The Old Southwest is the tree-lined residential district just southwest of downtown Columbia, spreading south of West Broadway and running roughly from West Boulevard over to Edgewood Avenue, with Stewart Road and Rollins Road cutting through it and Westwood, Westmount and Glenwood Avenues among its best-known streets. Much of it took shape in the early 1900s, when Judge John A. Stewart laid out lots with setbacks and covenants, paved the streets with stone from his own quarry, the site that's now Stewart Park, and set the tone for the kind of houses that went up over the following decades. The result is a neighborhood of Colonial Revival homes, foursquares, Craftsman bungalows and brick Tudors from the 1910s through the 1930s, with a later layer of 1940s cottages and 1950s ranches filling the gaps. Many still have their plaster walls, oak floors, wood windows, limestone foundation walls and detached garages, and nearly all sit under a big canopy of oaks and maples. That age and that shade shape almost every repair we do here, from cracks that open as an old house settles to gutters that fill up every October.
The neighborhood has an easy, walkable feel. Stewart Park, built into the old limestone quarry, sits in the middle of it, and the MKT Trail slips beneath Stewart Road on its way from Flat Branch Park toward Forum Boulevard and the Katy Trail beyond, so runners and cyclists are part of the morning traffic. West Broadway's line of large historic homes marks the northern edge, and it's a short trip to downtown, the Mizzou campus and the hospitals on the south side of campus. The streets are narrower than in newer parts of town, many houses have long driveways leading to small back garages, and on-street parking fills up near the trail access points on nice weekends. We plan our stops around that and keep materials and debris tidy on lawns that people clearly care about.
ZIP codes we cover in Old Southwest: 65203
What Old Southwest neighbors book most
- Drywall Repair
- Door Repair & Adjustment
- Gutter Cleaning & Repair
- Interior Painting & Touch-Ups
- Light Fixture Installation
- Fence & Gate Repair
Jobs we handle a lot around Old Southwest
In the Old Southwest we spend a lot of time on old-house work: plaster cracks over doors and along stairways, painted-shut windows and doors that swell in July and rattle in January, worn oak thresholds and loose railings, and rooms where the original ceiling box needs to be replaced with a fan-rated one before a ceiling fan can go up. Outside, it's gutters and downspouts overloaded by oak leaves and acorns, cracked mortar and loose steps where limestone meets concrete, wood fences and gates in shaded side yards that rot at the posts, and fascia boards that have soaked up years of overflow. We also help owners who are updating old houses with smart thermostats, video doorbells and new light fixtures, working around the original wiring that many of these homes still carry in places.
Questions we hear in Old Southwest
My 1920s house has cracks over almost every doorway. Is that a problem?
Usually not a structural one. Plaster on wood lath flexes and cracks as a house moves through the seasons, and Columbia's swing from humid summers to dry heated winters works the framing back and forth every year. Doorways and the corners of window openings are where that stress concentrates. We re-attach loose plaster to the lath, open and fill the cracks with materials that bond to old plaster, and blend the surface so the repair holds. If a crack keeps widening or doors are suddenly binding, we'll point out what we see so you can decide whether a foundation check is worth it.
Can you keep the original hardware and trim on my doors?
Yes, and in this neighborhood we prefer to. Old mortise locks, glass knobs and five-panel doors are usually worth saving. We can free up painted-over hinges, adjust strike plates, rebuild or replace worn mortise lock parts where they're available, and plane a binding edge just enough to swing freely again, then seal the bare wood so it doesn't swell back.
Is there anything special about painting in a house this old?
Homes built before 1978 may have lead in older paint layers, and many in the Old Southwest have several coats of it under the newer finish. We use lead-safe methods when we scrape or sand, keep dust contained and cleaned up with a HEPA vacuum, and talk with you about testing first if a project means disturbing a lot of old paint. For small touch-ups the risk is low, but we still treat old surfaces carefully.
My gutters overflow every fall even though they're cleaned. Why?
Under heavy oak and maple cover, a single cleaning in late fall often isn't enough, because the trees drop in stages and the downspouts clog with acorns and twigs first. On older houses the gutters may also have lost their pitch as the hangers loosened. We clean, flush and re-pitch the runs, add or reset hangers, and can talk with you about guards that suit the kind of debris your trees drop.
Everything we offer in Old Southwest
Nearby areas we also cover
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