Jersey Village, a 1950s dairy farm turned neighborhood
Clark W. Henry ran F&M Dairy on these 1,236 acres and raised Jersey cattle before the first houses went up in 1954. Cypress is one of its neighbors, so Jersey Village is about as close to home as our work gets, and we know the 290 traffic as well as you do.
Working in Jersey Village
Development started in February 1954, the first family moved into the subdivision that October, and the city incorporated on April 16, 1956. The early community built a school, a park and an 18-hole golf course around those first streets. If your house was built in those first years, it is about seventy years old and has had its own string of owners, additions and roof jobs since. Two houses that started from the same plan in 1955 can be very different today, so we treat every one as its own house and look before we assume anything.
The city covers 3.5 square miles and had 7,921 residents at the 2020 census. US 290, Farm to Market Road 529 and the old Southern Pacific line frame it, and Cypress-Fairbanks ISD runs the schools, including Jersey Village High School, which opened in 1972. For a homeowner, the useful fact is that this is an established town with its own government. The City of Jersey Village is the authority for permits on your street, and Harris County only comes into it for land outside the city limits. We get the city’s requirements for your job before we schedule a crew, so nobody shows up to a job that is not cleared to start.
If a roof here has already been replaced two or three times, the decking is the part we worry about. Older plank or early plywood decking can be perfectly fine, or it can be stained and soft around every vent and along the eaves. We check it from the attic before we price the job, so the number you get already includes what the decking needs. That way the tear-off day does not come with a phone call about a surprise. The same attic trip tells us whether the ventilation is doing its job, which on a house this age it often is not, because a lot of older attics were built with almost none.
The jobs that come up here
Roof replacement and architectural shingle replacement cover most of what the older roofs here need. If you are replacing anyway, Class 4 shingle replacement is worth pricing side by side, because spring hail reaches this side of Harris County the same as everywhere else around Houston. Call your insurance carrier and ask whether a Class 4 roof changes your premium before you decide; some carriers say yes, and we will not promise it for them. If the hail has already come through, hail damage roof replacement is the page to read. A replacement is also the easiest moment to add ridge vents and fix the soffit intake, since the roof is open anyway.
Inside, houses from the 1950s and 1960s were usually built around closed kitchens and small baths. Kitchen remodeling opens a wall when the layout itself is the problem, and kitchen renovation keeps the layout and replaces cabinets, counters and lighting. Bathroom remodeling and family room remodeling round out the inside work that fits here, especially in a house where the original den was added onto at some point and never quite matched the rest. Out back, deck installation adds a level place to sit off the back door, and a patio cover over it handles the afternoon sun. We build the cover with its own beam and posts and tie it to the house with flashing that sheds water away from the wall.
- Architectural shingle replacement Plenty of older Houston subdivisions were built with three-tab shingles, and many of those roofs are at the end of their run.
- Class 4 shingle replacement Switching an existing roof to Class 4 usually comes up after a hail claim or when the old roof is due anyway.
- Family room remodeling The family room is where the TV, the kids, the dog and the Saturday game all end up.
Plenty of roofs we look at need a repair or nothing at all. If that is yours, you will hear it from us first.
Is Jersey Village close enough to Cypress for a quick look at my roof?
It is right next door to Cypress, so an inspection here fits into most days. Call early in the week and there is a fair chance one of us can walk the roof within a few days. You get photos of what we saw either way.
Does the City of Jersey Village or Harris County handle my permit?
Your house is inside an incorporated city, so the City of Jersey Village is the authority for work on it. We confirm what your particular job needs before the crew shows up and put it in the written scope. Harris County only applies if the property is outside the city limits.
My house is from the 1950s. What will you find in the decking?
Maybe nothing, maybe a few soft sheets, and we would rather know before the tear-off than during it. We look from the attic for staining, soft spots and gaps between boards, and the scope lists what we expect to replace. If we find more once the old roof is off, you see photos before we do the extra work.
Do you build covers over backyard decks and patios?
Yes. Patio covers are part of what we build, and over a deck they turn a spot you avoid from June to September into one you actually use. We tie the cover into the house framing and flash it where it meets the roof so the new cover does not become the new leak.
Can you open up a closed 1950s kitchen?
Often, but it depends on what that wall is carrying. If it is a bearing wall, we size a beam to take the load, and that changes the scope and the schedule. We tell you which kind of wall it is at the first visit so the number you get is the real one.
Close by
We also work in Spring Valley Village, Hedwig Village, Hilshire Village, Bunker Hill Village, Cypress. The whole list is on the Harris County page.
Two owners, both veterans, one phone number. We inspect, photograph and tell you what the job really needs, including when it needs nothing yet. Military families and first responders take 10% off.