Hardwood re&re...

CobraCommand said:

Are you replacing just around the door?

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Gunther said:

1) Can't see shit from that photo

2) Would it be cheaper to repair & refinish?

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BoxsterSteve said:

You’re right, the photo doesn’t show it well at all.
I blame the dog.
The issue being the floor is buckling upward 1/4” for over 10’ along a couple of the hardwood flooring seams.

This is what we got when we bought not quite 2 years back. When we bought the home, we were told the flooring was buckling because it was installed too tightly together.

Turns out instead there was long ignored water intrusion through the faulty French door, causing water to run between the hardwood and subfloor, hell, there are water marks on the wood beam directly below in the basement and lots of rusty flooring nails visible from below. All this lower level evidence of water intrusion was conveniently camouflaged by insulation and vapour barrier the previous owner installed himself.

This hardwood has been repaired once. There are fine brad nails visible where boards were surface nailed. Previous owners had it “repaired” by the original installer within a month of our taking possession. Homeowner’s wife remarked more than once that “they had glue everywhere”.

My take on the whole thing is that when it was opened up and the homeowners were shown the extent of what should be done to remedy the problem properly, they opted to button it back up and not actually have anything fixed. In the timeline, this would have been roughly 3 weeks before they moved out and we took possession.

We did get quotes from two different refinishers; each one right on $6k, or exactly what the re & re labour is costing us. At least this way we don’t have to try and colour match hardwood floor that has been out of production for close to a decade to material that has been in the house and sun bleached for the same length of time.

Figured since we were ripping off the Band-Aid and were spending a butt ton of money replacing wood floor, f#ck it and change out the carpet that was due for replacement in the two upper floor bedrooms while the mess was being made.
New stuff sure does look nice.

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Gunther said:

Very nice - how wide are those planks? Solid oak/walnut? Also out of curiosity, was it $6K for materials + labor or just materials & how many sqft? lol...

Asking because I DIY'd ~1,000 sqft of flooring in our house last year and I've always been curious how much it would've cost to get the job done *right,* because damn it takes some patience to do it right - and that looks like they did a good job. There's a lot going on that you wouldn't consider as a noob - how far the planks are spaced, color variations, etc... then there's planks of inconsistent widths, leading to inevitable gaps if you're not paying attention, and a whole host of other crap I've wiped from memory. Took me forever to get it done but it looks good & I gained quite a lot of appreciation for the guys doing this work day-in & day-out... can't imagine how stressful that has to be on the human body.

Looks like they took the baseboard off, too, instead of just going around w/ quarter-round. I did the same which added a shitload of time to the project... but hey it looks good and somehow makes the room feel way bigger w/o it.

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BoxsterSteve said:

Planks are 7 1/2” wide, engineered walnut flooring 3/4” thick, just like what was removed.
What came out was 2” wide.

Changes the look completely. New floor isn’t as glossy and shiny as the old one. Drove SWMBO insane too with sweaty footprints and dog dish water drops all over. We could have mopped daily.

The $6k is labour only.
Flooring and installation supplies are almost $11k for roughly 775 sqft of area.

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Gunther said:

That's what I'd figured - looked wider than 5" so $6K sounded like a not-a-lot of money for a quality job. Engineered is definitely the way to go on anything over 5." My wife & I built our house but didn't want to pay the ridiculous $18/sqft the builder wanted to install the cheapest-grade Bruce hardwood that's sold on the endcaps @ Home Depot, which typically sells for around $3/sqft. And their installers did NOT do a good job on a lot of the houses around here - multiple neighbors have had problems. Sometimes you don't even get what you pay for but it looks like you did - congrats.

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