Wood Flooring Recommendations

[Martin]

any recommendations on a wood flooring shop? I'm not necessarily looking for the cheapest person... just a quality installer that can help me through the decision-making process. any tips from past experiences? any preferences as to materials, e.g. solid wood vs. engineered?

i had a contractor lined up that i trusted flake out on me... they came out a week and a half ago to give me a quote and they've been radio silent since then... that doesn't really give me a good feeling about their follow-through, so i'm looking for alternatives.

thanks!

[BBatesokc]

We had our upstairs flooring redone with a bamboo flooring.

We found a flooring we really liked from Lumber Liquidators that was on deep clearance. They installed it and the total cost was less than if we bought laminate from Sam's and installed it ourself!

We've been very happy with it and even got zero percent financing to seal the deal.

[Martin]

might have to look into them... did the installation cost cover moving furniture out of the way or were you responsible for that?

[rezman]

Hardwood Floors by Brandon. 314-9298.

[Martin]

Hardwood Floors by Brandon. 314-9298.

thanks for the tip!

[BBatesokc]

might have to look into them... did the installation cost cover moving furniture out of the way or were you responsible for that?

Wasn't much furniture, but they moved it all - bedroom furniture mostly.

[Martin]

i'm probably going to shop around this weekend and look for some memorial day deals but i finally heard back from the contractor today. they're wanting roughly $23 per square foot installed starting with unfinished solid flooring material... i'm thinking that's crazy high.

[FighttheGoodFight]

i'm probably going to shop around this weekend and look for some memorial day deals but i finally heard back from the contractor today. they're wanting roughly $23 per square foot installed starting with unfinished solid flooring material... i'm thinking that's crazy high.

In my experience if someone doesn't really want to do a job if they are too busy they will throw out a high number to see if the person will bite.

[mkjeeves]

We have used Davis Carpet in Yukon the last two times we replaced carpet. The last time included a few hundred sq ft of wood in the living room and kitchen. That was maybe 6-8 years ago. They did a good job both times. Moved some furniture IIRC. We were living in the house but doing a major remodel and moved some things out to storage. However, the Mohawk flooring sample we picked from was a fair bit lighter than what Mohawk shipped. It was half installed before we saw it. Mohawk has a fine print disclaimer about that issue. We didn’t press it but lesson learned. It still looked good and overall we are happy with it. Wish I had done the whole house. The wood is going to far outlive the carpet. With the color issues we had before I assume it would be impossible to match it a second time.

[foodiefan]

Hardwood Floors by Brandon. 314-9298.

Second recommendation for Brandon. Refinished my den parquet flooring. . did a great job. . .and a few years later did a replace/restain in front of the fireplace (slab leak). You can barely see the repair!!

[Martin]

just following up on this endeavor to get wood floors installed...

never heard back from contractor one when asking questions as to how their $23k estimate was broken down... i.e. what was being budgeted for materials, labor, etc.

i ended up deciding to get some tile on a hearth done at the same time... the tiles extend onto the floor and so this seemed like the best time to get it hammered out. because of that, I limited my search for companies that could do wood and tile.

next, i went to mill creek on britton road and had a decent enough experience in the store but it turned a bit sour. the guy seemed to know his wood floors well enough but choked when talking about the tile. he was trying to tell me that they would just lay the new tiles over the old and that seemed to be pretty weird. the tiles on the floor have a rounded corner and he said that they'd just put a shim on that part to give the new tiles something to sit on. the dealbreaker, though, was when he came back with his estimate... he gave me a break on the material price but overestimated the square footage by around 200 square feet. I wasn't super careful when I measured myself but I knew that I wasn't off by a whole 10'x20' room.

after that, I went to bryan's flooring on reno and had a really good experience. they carried the same material and matched mill creek's listed price but not the discounted price. since they didn't overestimate the square footage, it actually came out cheaper than mill creek. the only rub is that the material I selected is on back-order and won't be here for around 6 weeks... I can live with that, though, especially since they were good at communicating it.

the moral of the story is that i'm really glad that I measured for myself before shopping around... i could've been taken for a ride and wouldn't have known it.

[bombermwc]

I used Bryans (240) for mine. The only issue i had with them was that they didnt do a very good job of communicating and worrying about schedules for residential customers. They're all about the commercial stuff where that's not as important. But in my home, i'm picky about details and since im taking off work, im pretty pissy if i have to schedule in 2 more days for "follow-up" tasks...like we're short a box and the transitions aren't right. I had to have them come back and fix boards that didn't lock and started separating on the edge too. In fact, i have a couple doing it again a year later.

I love the product, but i dont think i would use Bryan's residential again. We use them commercially at work and they are great. But it's a lot less complicated to lay 24" carpet squares and covebase.

I didn't have a good feeling from Millcreek (240). The sales person didn't seem to really know a lot and the whole place felt cheap. They just didn't seem to be able to give a real confident supply guarantee and so we never even bothered with a quote. It closed shortly after. Maybe she knew they were closing and had already given up?

[Robert_M]

he was trying to tell me that they would just lay the new tiles over the old and that seemed to be pretty weird. the tiles on the floor have a rounded corner and he said that they'd just put a shim on that part to give the new tiles something to sit on.

Never a good idea to lay over an existing floor especially in a residential application. The labor might be cheaper without having to demo the existing but baseboards and doors will all have to be adjusted and you will have to worry about the bond between the two layers. Only time I would ever recommend overlaying existing ceramic is when demoing the existing takes chucks of concrete out with it or one time at Fort Sill chucks of concrete block walls.

the dealbreaker, though, was when he came back with his estimate... he gave me a break on the material price but overestimated the square footage by around 200 square feet. I wasn't super careful when I measured myself but I knew that I wasn't off by a whole 10'x20' room.

I will always figure additional tile for breakage, waste, and attic stock with any project. Usually around 5% for commercial due to more boxy layouts and 10% or more for residential especially if you are doing a lot of hallways, angle cuts, or patterns. This should just be for the materials only and the labor price should be more of an exact square footage. This should also help avoid the "short a box" scenario bombermwc pointed out.

[rezman]

I once did a shot blasting job over terrazzo tile in a shopping mall. Instead of pulling up all the existing tile, I ran ahead of the tile layers and knocked the glaze off of the terrazzo, and they came behind me and laid sparkling white new tile right over the old. I've seen it done in residential as well with good results.

[chuck5815]

What is the average cost per sq. ft. for labor to lay tile on a prepared sub-floor?

Is around $10/sq. ft. pretty close to fair market?

[Robert_M]

I once did a shot blasting job over terrazzo tile in a shopping mall. Instead of pulling up all the existing tile, I ran ahead of the tile layers and knocked the glaze off of the terrazzo, and they came behind me and laid sparkling white new tile right over the old. I've seen it done in residential as well with good results.

I can see the shot blasting for such a huge space like a mall where the time to take up and replace the ceramic as well as the dust that would be create would be an issue.

In my several years in the field and 15+ in the office we have only overlaid ceramic with ceramic on technically one job for a City government. There was 2x2 in portions of the bathroom that had been set into a thick set mud bed back in the 50's or so. It wasn't coming out except with jack hammers and saws and new concrete being poured in. But it was flush with the existing hallway so we were able to prime it, use a leveling compound, and install a crack isolation membrane. Down at Fort Sill with the concrete block walls they had us attached backboard over the existing tile which was screwed and glued. We have laid over ceramic with other finishes like vinyl tile or carpet but always primed and covered with a leveler. Most renovation jobs that have an architect will require the existing finishes to be removed to the slab with all adhesives and setting materials removed.

For a residential I won't say it hasn't been done but I have never seen it and never would do it. To many unknowns for how well the tile is bonded and what is underneath that tile.

[Robert_M]

What is the average cost per sq. ft. for labor to lay tile on a prepared sub-floor?

Is around $10/sq. ft. pretty close to fair market?

For a residential project it would be size depended as well as what areas your doing. Hallways or areas with a lot of cuts slow things down but for floors that's probably a good base price point. Square open area you might be done for less. Usually things like counter tops, backslashes, showers, tub surrounds and things like that will be more.

[Martin]

circling back to this around 6 months later... absolutely skip bryan's flooring.

in all honesty, my floors ended up looking great... getting there was a huge hassle, though. sales promised a herringbone pattern in my quote but the installers had no idea and said it couldn't be done on the first day of installation. they left several of my baseboards hanging off the walls and when I went to reattach them, i found out that they didn't run the flooring close enough to the wall so that the subfloor showed through in a few spots. I went with them as a one stop shop for both tile and wood... they put new tile on my fireplace surround and the floor in front of the fireplace... but they waited to install that after the wood flooring and so some of the grout washed onto the wood and discolored it a little. they fixed all of my issues after I brought them to their attention, so that's good... i would have just preferred that they took more pride in their workmanship without me having to check on them.

the last straw happened today, which is why i'm writing this... they coded the billing wrong and instead of billing it at one year deferred interest, it was billed at six months deferred interest so I get to make a surprise payment this month to make sure I don't pay any interest. it seems as if nobody there has a clue what they're doing.