Stairs & Trim in Worthington, OH

Worthington is one of the few towns around Columbus that was designed rather than accumulated. The Scioto Company was founded in Connecticut on 5 May 1802, led by James Kilbourne, and dissolved on 28 January 1805 having apportioned the land and established the church, school and library. By December 1803 the village was set out as 160 three-quarter-acre lots around a five-acre green — a New England plan dropped into Ohio.

That history is visible in the housing. James Kilbourne's 1808 newspaper building at 679-681 High Street is the oldest commercial building in continuous use in the state; the Aurora Buttles House dates from 1818 and the Lewis Noble House from 1863. Around Old Worthington the domestic stock is of a similar age, and it behaves accordingly: plank subfloors, settled joists, floors well outside modern flatness tolerance, and frequently original hardwood beneath something added later.

In houses with that much period character, the material conversation is genuinely different. A very wide, heavily wire-brushed contemporary plank fights with original trim in a way a narrower board at a lower sheen does not. We raise it before an order goes in, because it is the sort of thing that is obvious the moment a floor is down and expensive at that point.

Worthington also grew hard in the mid-century — from 2,141 people in 1950 to 9,239 in 1960, a 331.5% rise — so there is a substantial band of fifties and sixties housing around the historic core. Those are plywood decks with the usual layers on top and the usual accumulated height to resolve at the casings.

Stairs are where an old Worthington house takes the most care. Steep, narrow, rarely square, often with a winder or a return that has to be scribed on site. We measure them individually rather than counting steps, because a staircase is the one part of a flooring job with no reliable shortcut.

We bring the showroom to Worthington. Samples come to the house, the rooms are measured on the visit, and the proposal covers the whole project.