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Re: Wood Flooring - a stressful and $$ day 

By: micro in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (1)
Sat, 06 Aug 22 4:21 PM | 22 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 34346 of 58654
(This msg. is a reply to 34337 by Decomposed)
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De,

I like the locust and am glad you got a hardwood. Bamboo.

If you have a humid climate do not put this down ever.

Worst mstake my brother ever made and yes, he got "sold" it by some salesperson at a Lumber Liquidators, which the liquidator partstands for all signs of intelligence have been liquidated from this person..

engineered hardwood OR just real hardwood would be much better.. Secondly, ALWAYS glue the boards even if the place you buy it from says don't. Unless of course you enjoy spending weeks after a few years trying to get all the seam cracks that will happen from swelling and contracting back together again..


SO, this was a GREAT thing actually.. And I am glad that someone discovered an additional thickness underlayment was needed.

The new floor looks beautiful! You done good! I hope Mrs. De is happy because if SHE IS, you will be also..

Yes, flooring is expensive. Miz micro and I are looking at it ourselves even though there is nothing wrong with ours..

CArpeting will cost us over 10 grand.. And that is just part of the house. We could get it it for less but would not be happy with it.. I like dense, and plush and lots of cushiing underneath.. Especially with all my artifical joints. When I walk I want to be cushioned underneath.

Anyway, Congrats on a beutiful bew floor and home! You guys done good! I am envious!

micro...


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The above is a reply to the following message:
Wood Flooring - a stressful and $$ day
By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE
Sat, 06 Aug 22 3:18 AM 		Msg. 34337 of 58654

We dodged a bullet today. On the 25th, my wife and I placed a "special order" for bamboo flooring (shown to the left) from the Nashua Floor & Decor, about 90 minutes away. It was a great price and is particularly hard... more difficult for the dog to scratch though I'm confident he'll find a way. We liked it. Special orders take three weeks to be delivered and cannot be returned, but we were confident and went ahead.

Last night (August 4), our builder called and told us that, per the specs, the flooring we ordered is just 0.5" thick. It should be 0.75" since it needs to match up with the tile going into the kitchen and bathrooms and, maybe more importantly, with the way the doors are mounted. Whoops. He said that we now need to buy cork underlayment to lift the flooring another quarter inch. @#%$!

Cork underlayment comes in a spool and is placed by the flooring guy, not the homebuilder, as part of the flooring installation. So I called our floor guy and told him what was going on. He then asked whether the flooring needed glue... or nails? I said I didn't know so I sent him a link to the specifications and encouraged him to call the store if he needed details.

A bit later, my builder called again. The flooring guy had looked at the flooring's specs, then reported that the specs say "NO" to cork. Cork underlayment is not an option. (I looked and he was telling the truth.) He told our builder that he, the builder, need to put down something called LUAN as an underlayment prior to the installation. LUAN is, essentially, quarter-inch plywood.

My builder called me again and gave me the update. He said that putting down the plywood is time consuming and he doesn't know whether he can get it done by the flooring guy's scheduled installation date. I *would* have said that he's yanking my chain since it shouldn't be all that time consuming, but my builder is currently focused on prepping the exterior for siding installation. I also think he's feeling considerable pressure since he knows that the house is well behind schedule. At one point last year he was optimistic that he'd have it done by Spring '22. Heh. I wish.

Over the course of these calls, I also learned that the bamboo is "FREE FLOATING." That means that it doesn't need nails or glue. Good, right? No, it's not. Without nails or glue, wood floors can wiggle. Over time, the boards can start to move. So, the flooring guy said that he would nail the boards anyway. But when he called the store to ask them about the cork underlayment, they also told him that nails and glue cannot be used with it. Bamboo - or, at least, our Spanish Tiger II bamboo - can ONLY be free floating. And, per both my builder and the flooring guy, free floating floors kind of suck.

Bear in mind that we can't get our money back on our flooring. It's a special order. About now, I was feeling pretty bad. I'd spent $5,600. My builder was going to have to buy plywood which is insanely expensive nowadays and bill us for his additional installation time which ain't cheap either. And the final result would likely wiggle and squeak and maybe fall apart in a few years because the damned stuff FLOATS!!!!

At this point, I decided to call the store. The guy I spoke with was quite sympathetic when I told him we'd bought the wrong size flooring and, how would he suggest we get it to the right height? The first thing he said was that we could just do an exchange. I told him it was a special order and he said, "Oh. Well, let me go talk to my manager since the manufacturer hasn't yet shipped the product." He put me on hold and . . . would you believe something finally went right?? He came back and said that although returns on special orders weren't normally permitted, the manager had agreed to it this time.

!!! If any of you heard something like a very loud, very far away sigh of relief about noon today, that would have been me... Rolling Eyes

By early afternoon, my wife and I were on our way to Nashua. Now we had to pick out new flooring. And it had to be IN STOCK since there was no time to place another special order - not that I'd ever do that again.

The new wood is distressed Locust. It's .75", not as hard as bamboo but still pretty hard, and much more expensive - $6.29 a square foot instead of $4.00. But when you think about it, it's 50% more wood for just a little more than 50% additional cost. That's not so bad, after all. And I think it's prettier than the bamboo. That's just a matter of opinion, of course, but I like the Locust.

We also picked up four rolls of non-cork underlayment. That ran us another $1,200. Our flooring guy had told us that 4"-wide planks need underlayment while 6"-wide does not. We'll find out next week whether it's needed with the 5" Locust planks. If we can return the underlayment and get our $1,200 back I'll be happy. As it is, the wood floors and underlayment are running $9,700. Plus labor of about $6,000.

Sheesh. I remember when that was about the price of a house.

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