For Love and Flooring
Last Valentine’s Day, hubby and I
bought bedroom carpeting for our love nest. The installation ended with a
restoration company repairing a main beam that was cracking underneath our bed.
You can read those stories here and here.
This Valentine’s Day, we gave
each other a new kitchen floor. Not as romantic as bedroom carpeting. Or as
scary as the floor almost collapsing under us while we slept. But, since our
elderly house is feeling its age, frustration stymied us again. A sales
representative quote $2,140.00 for Luxury Vinyl Plank flooring. This surprised
me because our kitchen and pantry are small rooms.
Days later, an installer pointed to
the bottom of our crumbling wall at the back door. He said he could put the
floor in, but not molding. He needed a solid wall to tack the molding onto. And,
no guarantee the strip molding wouldn’t pull away from drywall; strip molding
on drywall needs a wood backing. My sales rep. had boasted she was a 16-year
veteran of the large flooring company. Why didn’t she mention the crumbling
wall when she sized and surveyed our kitchen and pantry? I cancelled.
Hubby repaired the walls. Then, dug
out the name of our sales rep. from last year’s carpet installation. This new
kitchen floor quote, for the same materials, from the same company, was $1,875.00.
Days after that, the second
installer couldn’t put down the LVP because the floor was too unlevel. A supervisor
from the large flooring company explained I needed to hire a contractor to
install sub-flooring before rescheduling with them to lay the LVP. Once that
phone conversation ended, the second installer told me someone from his home
improvement company could lay a sub-floor the next day. Hmm.
The large flooring company
sub-contracts their installation work to small contractors. I thought the
installer was taking a risk; offering me his contracting services. But, after
more than a week without my kitchen, I was desperate to get the floor installed
so hubby could hook the stove back up.
Next day, all day, one carpenter
worked putting down ¼ inch plywood that was supported on the lower areas of the
floors with shims. He didn’t cover a small area near the doorway into our
dining room. When I asked about it, he said it was okay because the LVP floor
installers would cover it. As I walked on the sub-floor, the shims popped. I
bounced where the plywood was hollow underneath. Again, the carpenter said it
was okay, the new floor would take care of that too. I paid him $684.00. Tire
tracks from his truck run along our side yard, and on our front lawn where he did
a K-turn.
More days later, a third
installer from the large flooring company bounced on the sub-floor. “That’s not
a shot you’re hearing, it’s a shim,” he said into his phone to his boss at the
large flooring company. The sub-floor had to be taken up and replaced with 7/16
inch material. The third installer took pictures of the business cards of the
second installer and the carpenter who worked all day in our kitchen. I also
asked him to take a picture of the receipt that I insisted the second installer
give me before the ¼ inch sub-floor was laid.
Days after that, the third
installer worked with an apprentice for 5 ½ hours. They pulled up the
sub-floor, replaced it with 7/16 inch material, laid the LVP, installed wood
backing around the bottom of the walls, and tacked strip molding. Thresholds to
the basement, back door and dining room are clean. Transition from kitchen to
pantry is capped beautifully. Gaps are sealed flawlessly.
The upside is that we got the
proper sub-floor for more than $300.00 less than if the large flooring company
had originally put it on our bill. Because of their employee’s mistake in
selling us the wrong sub-flooring, we weren’t charged the extra money the large
flooring company typically requires for sub-flooring. Add this to the money we
saved going with the second sales rep., and we saved more than $565.00.
However, since we weren’t told we needed a sub-floor to begin with, we put out
$684.00 we hadn’t intended.
Initially, going with the large
flooring company was disappointing. However, they made good on giving us the
floor we wanted and sucked up their loss with the sub-flooring. The saddest
take away is the back of the carpenter’s business card. It says ‘Thank You’
above biblical scripture on love.
We started this process in
January. It ended after Valentine’s Day. Hubby and I shouldn’t have put
pressure, again, on our poor old house to make Valentine’s Day memorable. This
day of love, lays enough pressure on relationships, let alone houses.
