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Installation services in South Park

South Park is the same era as North Park and a noticeably different job. The houses are generally smaller, the lots narrower, the streets steeper, and a far higher proportion of them have never been substantially remodeled — which is good news for character and mixed news for anyone drilling into them.

South Park · San Diego · 92102 · 92104

South Park specifics

What the housing here means for the work

The housing here is overwhelmingly 1910s to 1930s bungalow and cottage, and the distinguishing feature compared with North Park is how much of it is intact. Original plaster, original single-pane windows, original narrow door casings, and in a good number of homes an original detached garage at the back that was built for a Model A and does not fit a modern car. Intact plaster is actually easier to work with than patched plaster — it fails predictably — but the rooms are small, ceilings are lower than people expect, and a large TV that works in an open-plan house overwhelms a 1922 living room.

The topography matters more than in most flat-grid neighborhoods. Streets around Grape, Fern and Juniper run down toward the canyon, so a lot of these homes are on a slope with a raised foundation at the back and a crawl space that gets tall enough to work in. That is genuinely useful for running low-voltage cable — a floor-level run through a crawl space is often easier here than an attic run, which is the opposite of what works in the post-war tract neighborhoods.

Getting to you
South Park streets are narrow, frequently one-sided for parking, and steep enough on the canyon edges that where I stop matters for carrying a panel. Most homes have alley access to a rear garage rather than a street-facing driveway. It is a quiet neighborhood and I keep it that way — no ladders left in the street and no compressor at eight in the morning. Say if there is a preferred spot and I will use it.

Installation in South Park's original bungalows

South Park holds more untouched plaster than anywhere else I work, and that is genuinely good news. Plaster nobody has patched behaves consistently: the keys that squeezed through the lath in 1922 are still gripping, so the wall reacts the same way at one end of a room as the other. Patched plaster is the difficult kind, because a skim coat hides where the repair starts and the bit goes soft with no warning halfway in. Before anything is bought, the more useful conversation here is usually about size — a 65-inch panel on the short wall of a small bungalow living room seats you closer than you will want.

The second South Park advantage is under the floor. These raised foundations sit on the slope running down toward the canyon, and the crawl space at the rear gets tall enough to work in properly. That makes a floor-level cable route easier here than an attic route, which is the reverse of every post-war tract in the city, and it keeps the run out of the summer heat completely. If you want a wired connection to a back bedroom or a desk, say whether the house sits on a raised foundation and I will tell you which way is cleaner.

Send a photo from South Park.

Tell me the cross street and roughly when the house was built, and I'll usually know what's behind the wall before I arrive.

Would rather type it out? Ask for a price here.