By Bill & Kevin Burnett
Q: My husband and I would like to have oak floors installed, but we are getting a wide range of quotes. What should we look for in an installer? What makes the prices for hardwood floors so varied?
A: The tone of your question suggests that cost is a factor for you. If you're up to it, think about installing the floor yourself and contracting the sanding and finishing.
We've had a fair amount of experience installing, repairing, sanding and finishing hardwood floors. With the proper tools, nailing down a floor is work but not brain surgery.
Floor nailing machines are available at rental centers. Instruction is available in any number of how-to manuals you can buy or borrow from the library. There's also a good step-by-step article on the Web at www.hammerzone.com/archives/flooring.
Sanding and finishing, on the other hand, require a professional touch. So if you opt to do it yourself, go ahead and purchase the material, rent the tools and nail the floor down, but leave the sanding and finishing to the pros.
If you decide to contract the entire job, you've started in the right direction by getting a number of quotes. We can certainly understand how befuddling it can be to get a wide range of quotes for the same job.
Unfortunately, shopping for a contractor is not like shopping for groceries. In the grocery business, the differences in price, quality and service are usually negligible. Not so in the remodeling business. Contractors' prices can vary for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is how busy a contractor is at a given time.
Here are some tips to make your shopping easier.
First, define the job and specify the details as much as possible. You must make sure that the contractors are bidding on the same project scope. This ensures a valid comparison. Your goal is to compare apples and apples; not apples and oranges.
Oak flooring varies by type of wood, grade and type of material. Oak can be either red or white with red oak being the most common. You'll usually pay a premium for white oak.
Oak flooring is graded No. 1 and No. 2. Stay away from lower grades. Ask a contractor for an example of each grade. No. 2 oak has some imperfections, usually small knots. Some people think they add character. As you might guess, No. 1 is more expensive than No. 2.
Also, check out the type of material. We've seen hardwood flooring milled in two ways. The first is flat boards about 3/8-inch thickness. The boards are face-nailed through the boards into the subfloor and the nail holes are filled with putty.
The second is tongue-and-groove boards about 3/4-inch thickness. The boards are "blind nailed" through the tongue into the subfloor. No nail holes show and no puttying is required.
The last thing to specify for your project is the finish. The number of coats and the type of finish will affect the cost. Obviously a three-coat job will cost more than a two-coat job.
Also, polyurethane finishes usually cost less than harder, longer-lasting and more scratch-resistant floor finishes such as Glitsa, which is a brand name of a hard floor finish that must be professionally installed.
A word of caution here: Polyurethane yellows with age, so it's probably OK for floors stained a medium to dark color, but lighter floors will become more yellow with time.
Second - and you seem to have already done this - get several bids from licensed, bonded and insured contractors.
Once you've narrowed the field to three or four contractors, ask for references and check them out. Call the references and ask for permission to look at the work. Then go look at the jobs.
In addition to asking former customers about their satisfaction and seeing if the quality of the job meets your standards, ask about whether workers arrived as promised and whether the work was done in a timely manner.
Also ask about cleanliness of the workers. This is especially important in a flooring project because it entails a good deal of sanding. There's nothing worse than having fine sanding dust throughout the house because proper precautions were not taken to seal off the workspace.
. Questions of a Do It Yourself nature should be submitted to our "