Remodeling, Additions & ADUs in University Place, WA

A city named for a campus that was never built

University Place takes its name from a plan that never happened. In the 1890s the University of Puget Sound bought land along what is now Grandview Drive for a campus on the bluff, then sold it back a few years later. The name stayed, and for a century the area grew as unincorporated Pierce County: a place of gravel pits, small farms, and, after the 1950 Narrows Bridge, a steady march of suburban neighborhoods spreading south from Tacoma toward Chambers Creek. It did not become a city until 1995.

That history is written into the housing. The oldest neighborhoods near the Tacoma line hold 1940s and 50s ramblers and a scattering of earlier cottages. The bluff above the Narrows and Chambers Bay filled in through the 1960s and 70s with split-levels and daylight-basement contemporaries built to catch the view. The 1980s and 90s brought larger two-story homes with vaulted great rooms, arched windows, and three-car garages, especially in the neighborhoods off Grandview and Chambers Creek Road. And then, in 2007, the county turned the old sand-and-gravel quarry on the waterfront into Chambers Bay, host of the 2015 U.S. Open, and gave University Place a new front yard.

The view from the bluff

University Place sits on a shelf of land that drops to Puget Sound, and the homes people want most are the ones that use it. From Grandview Drive and the neighborhoods west of it, the view runs across the Tacoma Narrows to Fox Island and the Gig Harbor peninsula, with the two Narrows bridges to the north and the Olympic Mountains beyond. Farther south, homes above Chambers Bay look down onto the links, the driftwood shoreline, and the ferry lane past Ketron and Anderson Islands. Sunsets here are a daily event, and the light that comes off the water late in the day is the reason so many of these houses have west-facing walls of glass.

That light is also what exposes a dated interior. Honey oak and almond tile that looked fine in 1992 look tired against a view like this. Most of our University Place work begins with the question of how to let the house feel as bright as the water it faces.

The neighborhoods University Place is known for

Day Island is a private, bridge-connected residential island at the mouth of the Narrows, with a yacht club, homes on both the Sound and the protected inner lagoon, and a character all its own. Sunset Beach, below the bluff off Grandview Drive, is one of the few true waterfront neighborhoods in the city, with homes at beach level facing west. The Grandview Drive corridor and the streets stepping down from it hold the classic view homes of the 1960s through 1990s. The Chambers Creek area, along Chambers Creek Road and above Chambers Bay, offers larger lots, mature trees, and golf-course and Sound views. Soundview and the neighborhoods around Curran Apple Orchard are quieter, established, and close to Curtis High School and the Town Center.

Why University Place holds onto its residents

University Place is a place people move to for the schools and stay for everything else. The University Place School District is consistently among the highest rated in Pierce County. Chambers Bay's three-mile loop trail has become the community's living room, walked at every hour and in every kind of weather. The Cirque-Bridgeport Town Center, the library, the Saturday farmers market, and the summer jazz series give the city a center it never had as an unincorporated area. And Tacoma is ten minutes away, which matters to people who want a quiet street without giving up a city.

What remodeling a University Place home demands

Bluff lots are the defining condition. Much of western University Place sits within designated geologically hazardous and critical areas, and any change to a footprint, a deck, or drainage on a slope lot may require a geotechnical report and review under the city's critical areas code. Waterfront and near-shore properties also fall under the Shoreline Master Program. We build these reviews into pre-construction so they inform the design rather than interrupt it.

The homes themselves reflect their eras. Split-levels and daylight basements of the 1960s and 70s often have low ceilings, single-pane glass, and undersized electrical service. The 1980s and 90s homes frequently have builder-grade windows reaching the end of their lives, cedar shake or early composition roofs, and, in some cases, siding from the LP Inner-Seal era that needs assessment. Chambers Creek Properties has its own design standards. We know what to look for and we look before we price, including asbestos sampling and lead-safe practices for homes built before 1980.

Water finds its way into aging homes on the wet side of a bluff, and remodels sometimes reveal it. When that happens, we address it as part of the work. Our approach is explained on our water damage and hidden repairs page.

The interiors we see most, and how we rethink them

The classic University Place view home of the 1980s and 90s has a two-story living room with an arched picture window facing west, a formal dining room that is rarely used, a kitchen boxed off behind a wall or a peninsula, a primary suite with a corner jetted tub and a small shower, and a daylight basement with a slider to the yard.

Our work is to make these rooms belong to each other. We remove or open the wall between kitchen and living room so the view reaches the cook, replace the formal dining room with a working dining space that connects to both, and rebuild the primary bath with a freestanding tub placed for the window, a full-height glass shower, and a proper double vanity. Daylight basements become primary suites for aging parents, home offices with real built-ins, or self-contained ADUs. Material direction here often leans warm modern: pale rift-cut oak, limestone tones, plaster-finished fireplaces, and black steel accents that hold their own against the water.

What JIT does differently in University Place

Our nearest galleries to University Place sit just across the Narrows and ten minutes north: the Gig Harbor Modern Home, a 1995 view home reconfigured around a pale-wood kitchen and a quieter great room, and the Fircrest Hearth Home, a 2000 house rebuilt around its fireplace. They show how we work on this side of the water, too: respect the architecture, rebuild the interior with conviction, and manage the project so the owners always know what is happening.

Every University Place remodel we take on comes with a fixed proposal, a published schedule, a weekly written update, and one point of contact. We handle critical-area and shoreline coordination with the city. And because Justin holds a Washington real estate broker license alongside his contractor license, we will tell you plainly which changes add lasting value on this bluff and which do not.