Zavrick Contracting works across New Westminster, with a focus on the careful work its older housing needs: matching original trim, preparing century-old exteriors properly, and repairing plaster and drywall. Carpentry is the crew's strongest trade, which is what New West's pre-war homes tend to ask for most.
New Westminster was incorporated in 1860, making it the oldest incorporated city in British Columbia, and it counted about 78,900 residents in the 2021 Census. Its Queen's Park neighbourhood holds one of the province's densest concentrations of surviving pre-1940 houses.
New Westminster has some of the Lower Mainland's most beautiful older housing — the Queen's Park heritage streets, the character homes of the West End and Sapperton, the steep grade down through Uptown to the Quay. It's a city where careful, skilled work genuinely matters.
Older homes are unforgiving in a specific way: everything you do sits next to something original, so a repair either matches or it announces itself. That is finish carpentry more than anything else, and carpentry is what this crew is strongest at.
Painting, finish carpentry and drywall — and, on the older stock, plaster repair. One crew, start to finish, with the patience that these houses actually need.
Neighbourhoods we cover in New Westminster
South-west from Coquitlam. Queen's Park, the West End, Sapperton, Glenbrooke North, Uptown and the Quay are all within a straightforward run.
Carpentry is our strongest trade — which is exactly what New West's character and heritage homes tend to need.
- Mon – Sat · 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
- Based in Coquitlam, BC
Queen's Park and the Heritage Conservation Area
In 2017 New Westminster adopted a Heritage Conservation Area over Queen's Park — one of the larger residential heritage conservation areas in the province. Inside it, the city applies controls over demolition and over exterior alterations to houses identified as protected, which means some exterior work that would be routine elsewhere needs a heritage alteration permit first.
What that means in practice depends entirely on your individual property's designation, and the City of New Westminster is the only authoritative source on that. Before quoting exterior work on a Queen's Park house we'll ask you to confirm your property's status with the city, because a heritage alteration permit is not something to discover after the scaffolding goes up.
Interior work — painting, drywall, plaster repair, interior trim — sits outside those exterior controls in the normal case, but the same rule applies: confirm rather than assume.
Old paint, and why prep on a pre-war house is a different job
Canada restricted lead in consumer paint in 1976, so any paint layer on a New West house older than that may contain lead — and on a 1910s or 1920s house there may be a dozen layers down there.
This is not a reason to panic and it is a reason to be careful. Aggressive dry sanding or power-scraping of old paint is exactly what turns a stable coating into airborne dust, and BC's occupational health and safety rules require controls when workers may be exposed to lead. The practical version on a job site is containment, wet methods rather than dry sanding where possible, proper collection of debris, and not creating dust that ends up in the garden the kids play in.
It also affects the schedule and the price. Preparing a century-old exterior properly is slower than preparing a twenty-year-old one, and a quote that treats them the same has not accounted for the work.
Matching original fir trim and mouldings
New West's pre-war interiors run to substantial fir casings, deep baseboards and picture rails with profiles that stock mouldings simply do not reproduce. Putting modern MDF trim next to original fir is the single most common way a well-intentioned renovation makes a character house look worse.
The alternatives are better and not much harder: splice and repair the original where it can be saved, and where new material is genuinely needed, shape it to match the existing profile so the run reads as one piece. Same for plaster — a keyed, skim-coated patch disappears; a drywall offcut screwed into lath does not.
Our trades in New Westminster
New Westminster — questions we get asked
What does the Queen's Park Heritage Conservation Area mean for work on my house?
New Westminster adopted a Heritage Conservation Area over Queen's Park in 2017, applying controls over demolition and over exterior alterations to properties identified as protected within it. Whether a specific exterior job on your house needs a heritage alteration permit depends on your property's individual status, and the City of New Westminster is the only authority on that. We'll ask you to confirm it with the city before we quote exterior work there — not after.
My New West house is from the 1920s. Is the old paint a problem?
It's a reason to prepare carefully rather than a reason to worry. Canada restricted lead in consumer paint in 1976, so older layers may contain it, and the risk comes from turning that paint into dust. That means containment, avoiding aggressive dry sanding, collecting debris properly, and following BC's occupational health and safety requirements around lead exposure. It also means the prep genuinely takes longer than on a newer house, and we price it honestly rather than pretending otherwise.
Can you match the original fir trim in a character home?
That's the work we're best at. Where original casing or baseboard can be saved we splice and repair it; where new material is needed we shape it to the existing profile so the run looks continuous. Stock MDF mouldings next to original fir is the fastest way to make a heritage interior look renovated in the bad sense, and it's avoidable.
Sources & further reading
Regulations and municipal requirements change. Confirm anything that affects your project with your municipality before work starts.
Guides for New Westminster homeowners
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