Seeking advice on replacing oak floors
Hi all- My husband and I are buying our first home, a 900-sq ft apartment in a very old building that was renovated in 1984\. The floors are very scratched up and creak with almost every step, in most places in the apartment. Based on the many positive recommendations here, we contacted Jose Z and he came out to look at the floors (current owner and his furniture is still in the apartment, as we haven’t closed yet). After discussing it with Jose, to fully deal with the creakiness (which I know will bother us) we decided against just refinishing, and instead to replace the flooring and have Jose address issues with the sub-floor. Clearly the best time to have work like this done is before we move in, while the place is totally empty. That said, we’re new homeowners and this seems like a big project to us. We have many questions and are seeking advice and tips from those with more experience! – Should we buy pre-finished wood, or have Jose finish it? – Should we go with red oak, like what is there now, or something else? (We like the look of the current unstained red oak) – Wider planks? – Tips to prevent delays in the whole process? The co-op board seems very responsive so far (it’s a small self-managed building, so no bureaucracy or anything) If you would share thoughts on any of these questions, or the questions I’m not knowledgeable enough to ask, we’d be so grateful!
katerina
in Flooring 9 years and 6 months ago
8
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8 replies
katerina | 9 years and 4 months ago
Now that our floors are done, I thought I’d write a follow up for future newbies who might read this. The whole process took 17 work days from start to finish for our 920 sq ft apartment with work being done from 9-5. * We were very happy working with Jose. In addition to doing a great job on the floors, he was a good communicator about everything from our questions about wood, to the schedule of the work, to when we should come by to see the work-in-progress. * We chose red oak, 3″ wide planks, rift and quarter sawn, select grade. It came from Graf Brothers and we got it through PC Hardwood Floors (more on that below). We are not staining it (we like the natural look of the wood plus we have a dog who sheds copious amount of light brown fur, so a dark floor was out since we’re not fastidious about vacuuming) and we are SO pleased with the look of it. Different homes have their own styles, and we wanted something that we thought was a good match for the style of our home. The rift and quarter sawn planks are just beautiful and I think the higher cost of this wood (vs. plain sawn and/or a lower grade of wood) was worth every penny. * Jose gave us the names of a few lumberyards (P.C. Hardwood Floors, BK Floors, Queensboro Flooring) and we called around and ordered the wood ourselves and paid for it directly. We would have done the same with baseboards if we’d had Jose install those as well (but we are having other trim work done, like new door casings, so we’ll have a trim carpenter do all of that at the same time). * Lumberyards we called: P.C. Hardwood Floors (where we ultimately bought the wood) www.pcwoodfloors.com 718-369-3141, BK Floors 718-218-9288, Queensboro Flooring 718-349-0924\. Delivery charges were ~$75-100 flat fee, and then the cost of the wood itself, and sales tax. If they have the wood in stock, they can usually deliver the next business day. They open early in the morning, like 6:30am, and typically are just open on Saturdays before noon. Cancelling an order that has not yet gone out on a truck is not a big deal. We initially considered a cheaper wood, so I ended up calling for price quotes on multiple types of wood, and the lowest price lumberyard for one type of wood wasn?t the same for other types of wood. I was surprised at the wide variation in price. For example, one place quoted me $3.18 (per foot) for select grade, 3.25″ red oak, another place $3.80; for our order size of ~1000 square feet that meant a price difference of $620- worth making a few phone calls for price checks! Also, prices for the same wood fluctuate, so a price quote is only ?good? for a few days or maybe at most a week. Some places offered a bit of a discount if we would pay with a bank check, others gave the same price for cash or credit card. * Wood typically comes in ?bundles? of planks that varying lengths (e.g., from 1 to 7 feet long). So you find out how many square feet each bundle has and then how many bundles you need to cover your square footage. You need to order about 10% extra for waste. You can do special orders if you want every plank to be very long, for example, but this gets very expensive. Wider planks are more expensive than narrower planks because there is more waste when sawing up a log into wider planks. Plain sawn boards are cheaper than rift or quarter sawn boards for this same reason. * If you want to do a special order, make sure the boards will be tongue and groove all the way around, not just on the sides. * After your wood is delivered, be sure it will have time to acclimate to your home, before it will be installed, say, 4-6 days. The installer should test it for proper humidity before installing to ensure it won?t move around after installation. * With the old floors, cable cords came up straight through a plank in two spots instead of through a wall. I have no idea why. Initially, they had our new floors just do this too, since they figured we wanted the same set up, but we had them replace those planks and we will have the cords come up behind the baseboards. This was easy to fix since we caught it before they put down the poly finish. * Similar issue with two of our radiators, where they ?sunk? the radiator feet into the planks of wood in order to reconnect the radiators. They redid these spots, but now we have to have a plumber fix things up, and an extender piece will likely be too tall and the radiators will sit on small plinths (we think this will still be much better looking than having little holes in our new planks of wood). I think we perhaps could have avoided this if we’d called a plumber first (we still need to get these radiators fixed). * You’ll have to choose between an oil-based vs. water-based finish, and how glossy you want the finish. One day Jose put down 4 different finishes so we could see samples of what they looked like in our living room. We went with a mixed poly product that somehow has performance more like oil but without all the nasty fumes and with the quicker dry times of water. It also is a color more like a pure oil finish, which we liked. We are so happy we went for a new installation to fix all the creaks and get the subfloors properly leveled out. It was a lot more expensive than just sanding down and refinishing what was there, but we never would have been happy with all the creaking. So, I’d say if you’re on the fence and have the budget, go for it! Beautiful wood is timeless and you’ll get to see and enjoy it every day.
BobMarvin | 9 years and 6 months ago
“I?d never put it in a brownstone” I’d certainly never install ANY plain board floor on my parlor floor, or in any of the formal rooms (where there’s now the original elaborate parquet) but I’ve used it in my kitchen I replaced plain boards with plain boards and the “gunstock” finish matches the color of the original hallway floor that leads to the kitchen. It looks fine IMO.
no-permits | 9 years and 6 months ago
cate, i’m with bob, quality pre-finished hardwood doesnt necessarily look fake anymore. most times you can’t tell the difference because there really isn’t any. for certain spaces it’s fine, but that being said, I’d never put it in a brownstone.
BobMarvin | 9 years and 6 months ago
I disagree [sorry Cate] about pre-finished floors looking fake. They certainly used to, with strange [and IMO ugly] bevels between boards, but have been greatly improved, although I think the now trendy “hand-scraped” finishes DO look fake. When we started looking for a new floor for our kitchen I was very much prejudiced AGAINST pre-finished floors, but changed my mind after looking at many samples. Also, at least according to Consumer Reports, they have a far more durable finish than floors that are finished in place. FWIW we decided on Bruce 3″ “woodstock oak” flooring, laid over 1/2″ plywood on top of the original subfloor in our kitchen (which we had sanded and finished 40 years earlier?looked great, but didn’t wear well?it looked awful for the last 25 years). The installer had told us that the best installation method would have been to take out the old subfloor and replace it with 3/4″ plywood, but we chose the FAR cheaper option of having 1/2″ plywood laid over the original subfloor; we’re very pleased with the results..
katerina | 9 years and 6 months ago
The quote we got did include line items for readjusting the beams to level plywood. (and we discussed the possibility of being able to re-use the existing plywood, but how won’t know if that will be possible until they remove the existing oak and can see the condition of what is underneath) We will take to heart the advice about getting multiple quotes (of course!) and finishing after install. We will be on the first floor, so noise from an apartment below shouldn’t be an issue, but I do take the point about insulation. Thank you thank you!
cate | 9 years and 6 months ago
Definitely don’t buy pre-finished wood floors. Buy unfinished, then finish after install. The pre-finished wood floors look fake — even when they are not, even when they cost a fortune — it is terrible.
deancollins | 9 years and 6 months ago
Yes do it when the apartment is empty, yes replace the subfloor. Did the quote you get say anything about leveling the subfloors? eg are the beams in need of leveling when you are putting in the new subfloor or is the contractor just going to put a new subfloor in over the existing floor and not actually remove the current subfloor. If you do remove the current subfloor then my suggestion is putting in insulation into the spaces between the beams to help with insulation/noise. Some photos of the way we did ours here – http://bit.ly/135henry
Arkady | 9 years and 6 months ago
Whatever else you do, I’d get quotes from at least 2 more vendors. Maybe try Carlos & Verrazano or others in the archives.