Flooring: Difficult to Pick One

Posted October 8th, 2008 by tina

My Handyman often installs wood flooring, either laminates or pre-finished hardwood. Customers have already purchased the flooring and found that the installation is more than they want to tackle on their own.

Old Gray Carpet

Hardwood floors was a major component of the Newburyport remodeling project. The client wanted to replace all carpeting, including 2 sets of stairs, hallways and 3 bedrooms on 2 floors.

We started the project by taking measurements and providing the owner with preliminary estimates for different types of wood flooring (excluding stairs). Using a “relative cost” comparison:

Laminate flooring - labor plus materials $1,000 (baseline)
Pre-finished hardwood - labor plus materials roughly 35% over laminate baseline or $1,350
Hardwood flooring - labor (install and finish) plus materials roughly 60% over laminate baseline or $1,600. In addition to the added cost over pre-finished wood, you also need to consider the dust factor when finishing hardwood in an occupied home.

So you’re wondering what we decided? We went with the pre-finished hardwood to save money. We had provided the owner with an estimate for the bathrooms, flooring and extensive punchlist. Looking at the overall budget made the savings attractive, plus pre-finished flooring is actually harder which makes sense for any type of rental property.

My Handyman partnered with B & C Flooring in Portsmouth, NH and their expertise really helped. They verified measurements (our 10% contingency was right on target), recommended manufacturers, provided samples for review and were great answering questions throughout the process.