Wood Floors of Dallas Podcast

Avoid These Flooring Pitfalls: Expert Advice from a 20-Year Industry Veteran

• Hunter Ross • Episode 5

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What Are The Biggest Mistakes Homeowners Make When Choosing Flooring?

Making the wrong flooring choice can cost you thousands in wasted money and countless hours of frustration. Just ask the homeowner who thought she was saving $4,000 by choosing a cheaper contractor, only to end up spending double when the installation failed catastrophically three months later.

Hunter Ross, owner of Wood Floors of Dallas and veteran of over 20 years in the industry, shares eye-opening insights about the most common pitfalls homeowners face when selecting and installing new flooring. The episode tackles the information paradox many face – either becoming overwhelmed with conflicting research or not knowing enough to make informed decisions. Hunter emphasizes the critical importance of finding a trustworthy flooring specialist who provides honest guidance tailored to your specific needs.

The conversation dives deep into technical considerations that many overlook, including proper subfloor preparation, moisture protection, and how changing floor types affects everything from door clearances to baseboards. Hunter explains why "level" floors don't exist (though "flat" floors are essential), why hardwood doesn't belong in bathrooms, and how choosing the right material for homes with pets can save significant heartache down the road. Most importantly, he reveals why accountability matters – and why established flooring stores offer protections that independent contractors often cannot.

Whether you're planning a renovation soon or just want to understand what makes for a successful flooring project, this episode provides invaluable wisdom that could potentially save you thousands of dollars and prevent costly mistakes. Call 972-525-0026 for a free in-home consultation and ensure your next flooring project is done right the first time.

To learn more about Wood Floors of Dallas visit:
https://www.WoodFloorDallas.com
Wood Floors of Dallas
159 W. Main St., Suite 200
Lewisville, Texas 75057
972-525-0026

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Wood Floors of Dallas podcast, where we bring expert insights on hardwood flooring design and craftsmanship, hosted by Hunter Ross, owner of Wood Floors of Dallas, with over 20 years in the building product industry. Whether you're a homeowner or a general contractor, we're here to help you create amazing spaces with honor, quality and expertise. Let's get started.

Speaker 2:

Flooring is a major investment and the wrong choice can lead to regret. We break down the common pitfalls so you can make the right decision the first time. Welcome back everyone. I'm Sophia Yvette, co-host, slash producer, back in the studio with Hunter Ross, owner of Wood Floors of Dallas Hunter. How's it going today?

Speaker 3:

Hey Sophia, it's going really good. How are you doing?

Speaker 2:

I'm also doing good, hunter, and that is great to hear. So for our listeners, who may not know what are the biggest mistakes homeowners make when choosing flooring, yeah, sure, good question.

Speaker 3:

I would say there is a lot of different things that homeowners kind of get themselves into when they're choosing flooring. That can be a pitfall. A couple of things to focus on. For sure is there are two things that I hear and I see the most. Number one is that people over-educate themselves and so they get inundated with so much information that they don't know what's true, or they're undereducated and so they really don't have any idea about where to start. So really, if I could say, the number one thing that you should do in order to make sure you don't make a mistake is spend enough time and talk to enough different flooring providers, hardwood specialists. You want to get a specialist in the trade of what you're wanting to do. You want to spend some time interviewing different people to find a trust level of someone that you think is actually going to shoot you straight and and tell you the truth, whether you like it or not. Some homeowners do lots of research and they think they've read all the data on every single thing that you can buy. And they come in and they're firing questions off at you and you're like, okay, hold on. But yeah, that thing is not true. And then I don't know where you heard that from, but that's not true. So you really have to trust the person that's giving you the advice, that they're going to give you the best advice to take care of you Right? So a couple of things when you're going into look at different flooring is make sure you choose the right flooring for the application so you don't want to put, like, let's say, hardwood in a bathroom, traditionally not a good spot for it. Keep that clean, do resilient, like vinyl or tile, in your wet areas. And then make sure that if you have dogs or pets or things like that, you want to make sure you're buying a durable surface that can stand up to those and we covered those in a previous podcast. So big dogs and things like that you want to make sure you're getting a flooring that can stand up to those. And then, when it comes to making this decision on who you go with, is where a lot of people get in trouble and they cost them a lot of money.

Speaker 3:

I'll give you a quick example. I had a customer that I was dealing with probably about six months ago and she came to me. She wanted to get new engineered hardwoods. I explained to her that there is a big difference in quality between the brands. She had done her research and kind of settled on a certain brand. I expressed my differences with her. She was also talking to a couple other contractors, which is normal and fine. I expressed to her that we are a store, which is a lot different than somebody that just kind of like works out of the back of the truck because there's not a lot of accountability there, right? So if somebody does your floor and then they're gone, you try to get them on the phone and you're never going to see them again. But when we have a store, you can actually physically there's a place to hold accountability, right. You can walk in and say, hey, I have a problem. So picking the right contractor is very important, obviously, but trust in the proper education is the best things that's going to keep you out of trouble. So what happened with this client is I tried to give her the best information. She didn't want to listen, you know, which is fine. Make your own decisions, but I, I, if you do this, then this will happen, right.

Speaker 3:

And about three months after she got her flooring done by this other contractor, she called me and she was basically in tears and she said you know, hunter, I need you to come look at my floors. Yeah, yeah, everything got messed up. Can you come help me and rescue this situation? I went over there and this lady had spent around $12,000. My estimate was around 16. She had spent around $12,000 and paid this contractor to do it and he messed it up and would not fix it.

Speaker 3:

So everything that I told her came true. So now she's asking us to come back and she's apologized and said she should have done it with us. So now, instead of it being 16,000, it ended up being like 18,000 because of the stuff that we had to fix that they messed up, to tear everything back out and then re-put her new floors in. So she had to pay more than double what the cost of her flooring should be, because she paid for it and she had to tear it all back out. Okay, so that is a very, very real thing and it happens way more than you know. I've had it happen dozens of times over my career where somebody called me back later and told me they should have went with us because they tried to save some money and it got messed up. Okay, so do your due diligence. Look at all the reviews of everybody that you're working with. Buy from a store if you can for accountability and make sure you choose the right products Like those are the keys.

Speaker 2:

Oh my goodness, what a learning moment.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes, sophia, you would not have any idea about how often that happens. Most of the time people make that decision and they think they save money and they don't tell anybody because it's embarrassing. You think you're making the right decision, but you end up not, so yep, better to do your due diligence ahead of time and make the best decision, even if it costs a little bit more, for that safety.

Speaker 2:

Wow, Well, getting into a bit more of the specific sides of messing up the flooring. What are the risks of improper installation and how can you avoid them?

Speaker 3:

important thing about any floor installation is the preparation of the surface before the flooring goes down. So, whether you have a slab foundation or a pier and beam foundation, what we need as an installation professional is we need that floor to be as flat as possible. Quick note there is no such thing as a level floor. People often say, oh, I need my floors to be level. Well, if you're talking about using a real level, that's not a thing. We just need it to be flat, right, because no house is level. I've never found one yet. So we do a lot to prepare the surface. So, if it's like on a slab, we do a lot of floating, which is like a seven inches floor float to fill in the gaps, the low spots, and then we grind the high spots and then we make it nice and flat and smooth. So that's really important for the success of your installation. The other thing is you want to have moisture protection if you can. So most companies like for a vinyl plank installation, we put a six mil poly underneath. That's a moisture barrier for engineered hardwood. We always test the slab for moisture to make sure there's no moisture in there and if there is, we can put a roll on moisture barrier over it to protect the material. So those are kind of like two key pitfalls to make sure the installation goes right.

Speaker 3:

Some of the things you need to consider for a successful installation and make sure it doesn't get messed up is how high is the trim.

Speaker 3:

Your baseboards and your trim around your doors can be different heights right, depending on what floor you had before.

Speaker 3:

So if you had solid hardwood right and you just had a little bit and you want to switch it out and you want to put in like an engineered hardwood, that's going to drop the overall profile from the bottom of the door If it's filled in with this much solid hardwood because you have your three quarter inch plywood and your three quarter inch solid and you go down half that. Now you got a gap, all right. Now you got a big gap that you're going to have to overcome on all your door casings. So you put the floor in and now you got a giant hole. Well, if nobody told you about that ahead of time, guess what? Now you got to redo all of your casings and all your house, and that can get extremely expensive. So make sure you're working with a contractor that can go over the little details with you. If you call us, we will meticulously go over every single little detail so that you know ahead of time what you're getting into.

Speaker 2:

Wow, well, thank you so much for stopping in today, Hunter. We'll catch you in the next episode. Have a fantastic rest of your day.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, sophia, have a good one.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to Wood Floors of Dallas podcast. Ready to transform your space? Call 972-525-0026 for a free in-home consultation or visit woodfloordallascom to learn more. Work with honor, build with excellence. See you next time.