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July 19, 2007
Parquet Floor
As a result of water damage, I lost many pieces in my parquet floor. The damaged area is in a three window bay in the front of the garden level of my brownstone. The section is about 8ft. by 5ft.. I have recieved one quote of $14,000. I laughed. I am moving within the next year. Should I proceed with the repair (done by someone else), leave it, or tear up the whole floor and lay a new wood (not parquet) floor? While the floor is beautiful it is getting pretty thin and I hear that matching the woodgrain is fairly tricky. Comments or suggestions?
Comments
I would proceed with the patch job-even if the match isn’t perfect. If you are selling in a year a mediocre patch job with an explanation will show better than water damage (they will wonder f there is other invisible damage) or a torn up floor (one more thing to knock your price down)
Posted by: Anonymous at July 19, 2007 4:50 PM
Depending on what you mean by "lost," you might just want to let it sit untouched for a while. We had a flood that caused the individual planks in our parquet floor to curl. We were wisely advised to let the wood dry out over several months before taking any action (we thought we would have to replace it). Over several months, the wood did return pretty much to its original shape. I'm probably the only one who notices it is not perfect.
Good luck.
Posted by: anon at July 19, 2007 4:53 PM
Does the price sound crazy?
Posted by: anon at July 19, 2007 4:56 PM
$350 per square foot? yeah, i'd keep looking.
Posted by: Anonymous at July 19, 2007 5:15 PM
call the Olde Good THings HQ in Scranton. We bought a bunch of old parquet that matched our original parquet perfectly. Don't think we spent more than a few hundred bucks, if that.
Posted by: Brownstoner at July 19, 2007 6:08 PM
A good friend of mine had a flood in his brownstone while on vacation. Water flowed over his parlor floor straight for a full day before it was discovered and he had a lake covering his parquet floor. He repaired it himself, but as one poster said, it took a while for the parquets to dry out. They buckled which is what wood will do and they popped up. He repaired each one one by one and it looks OK now, which is amazing. About your 13,000 quote, glad you have a good sense of humor.
Good luck.
I don't know the condition of the parquet, but if you do in fact need to replace it, it takes a bit of looking but you can find it. I had some difficulty with my parlor floor when I bought it (extremely damaged floor) and wound up replacing the whole thing. I sold the salvaged pieces to a
a Brownstoner. The above poster says check out Good old things - try that and do a search on brownstoner for sources. I remember seeing a couple of sources written about when I was working on my problem.
By the way, I met some flim flam men on my floor adventure. One I would stay away from is Bestwood floors who was dishonest.
Posted by: donatella at July 20, 2007 8:38 AM
If waiting for the floor to dry doesn't solve the problem and it appears the only option is to replace it, why not simply put a new floor only in the bay? I've seen plenty of beautiful bays with contrasting floors--even ones that are not wood. My neighbor had a bay window with a terazzo floor (excuse my spelling) and it looked great. Or consider stone or tile that would coordinate with your floor. You'd probably need expert help to trim the floor to the point where the new floor begins but that might be better (and cheaper) than sacrificing an entire floor. I bet buyers would be much happier with 85% of the original historic floor than 100% of a new prefinished product that doesn't fit the house.
good luck
Posted by: Peterp at July 20, 2007 10:05 AM
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