Tile in Mabank, TX

Lorenzo D. Stover settled this ground in 1846. A merchant named John R. Jones platted the site in 1887 and called it Lawn City, after a dress fabric he sold, then Lawndale when the post office arrived. In 1900 the Southern Pacific ran its line less than a mile away and missed the town entirely, so G. W. Mason and Thomas Eubank, who owned the ranch the tracks crossed, laid out a square mile of their own and combined their surnames into Mabank. It was platted that February, incorporated in 1911, grew on cotton before World War I and on oil exploration between 1917 and 1925. Today it straddles Kaufman, Van Zandt and Henderson counties, and Mabank ISD reaches across all three, taking in Gun Barrel City as well.

Cedar Creek Reservoir changed the arithmetic after 1965. Weekend places went up along the shoreline, retirees moved down full-time and commuters started running U.S. 175 to Dallas. Market Street downtown still holds the storefronts, the Mabank Jubilee still takes it over once a year, and the gated Pinnacle Club with its eighteen holes and lake views sits a few minutes out toward Gun Barrel City. Cherokee Shores, Victory Estates and Paschall Heights carry the newer end.

For flooring, Mabank is the difficult kind of town: three building eras inside the same city limits. A frame house near the old rail corridor is on pier and beam with plank subfloor. A 1970s lake cabin has usually been added onto twice, which means the subfloor height changes at every doorway and there is old vinyl over particleboard somewhere in the middle of it. A house in one of the new subdivisions is a slab like anywhere else. When somebody wants one plank running through the entire house, which is what nearly everyone wants now, the real job is bringing those levels into one plane and handling the transitions honestly. The install is the easy part.

The lake adds humidity, and a house that sits shut between visits swings further than one lived in daily. We acclimate wood on site, set expansion gaps for a room that will be closed up in August and thrown open in February, and say so plainly when a waterproof product is the smarter call. Samples come to your house, and the crew that shows up has been the same crew for twenty years.