Contact
Subscribe
Jan 23, 2009 
Things have slowed down a bit with the contractors recently. It has been almost a week since we’ve had anyone actually doing anything to our house. However, we have had a couple stop out to get information on how to proceed with a few things.
First, one of the supposed flooring “experts” in town stopped by to check out the flooring damage. He is supposedly the best in the town according to our general contractor. While I wasn’t here to talk to him, Casey followed him around as he looked things over. In our living room, where both the tongue and groove sides of the flooring bowed out due to the moisture, and the flooring buckled in a couple areas, he claimed that it all had to come out. Same with the office on the main floor. He suggested replacing the maple (some of it is birds-eye) with oak because it is stronger and cheaper (price doesn’t matter when insurance is going to cover it, by the way flooring guy as long as it isn’t more expensive than what is in here). Then he looked at the steps going upstairs. He claimed that they were not sandable (which I have a hard time believing since they are a single board per step) and should be replaced.
Next, he looked at the upstairs which is all douglas fir, including the bathroom floor I spent hours and hours stripping of linoleum:
He said it all should come out as douglas fir isn’t a very hard wood.
First off, I put too much work into that floor to yank it out. It doesn’t look pretty in the pictures, but I’m certain it will sand out extremely nicely. Secondly, I don’t care if it isn’t as hard of a wood as, say, oak. Two reasons: one is that it is in pretty darn condition being that it is 80 years old, and the second is that I consider a ding or discoloration here and there “character.” It speaks to you. New flooring just doesn’t do that.
As far as the main floor, erm, floors go, I don’t see why it all has to come out. There are a couple spots that I can imagine the nails have failed and would have to at minimum be pulled up and renailed. Worst case is they’d have to replace the boards in that section. I have a few chunks of maple from when the kitchen/bathroom was turned into one room (granted it has a few layers of linoleum, nothing I haven’t seen before, right?) that could be used to fix these sections.
Granted, maybe he is just trying to give a worst case call for the insurance to make sure we can get what we need fixed without insurance breathing down our necks. However, Casey said he made remarks about how the wood they used for our trim is supposedly garbage. Does he think we are going to go pull the 80 year old trim off the walls and run to Home Depot and grab some crap wood to replace it? Sure… we’ll get right on that on boss.
We have a different contractor who is going to do the bathroom flooring upstairs, and if we are happy with the results there, we will have him do the main floor as well as he seemed confident the majority of the floor could be salvaged and seems a bit more on our side.
Besides flooring, we still have an uninsulated kitchen and bathroom and our temps aren’t supposed to get above zero for the next several days so I really hope they can get in soon to get these walls covered. Our heating bill is going to be outrageous…
All in the life of a homeowner right?
9 Comments 
bathroom, contractors, flooring, House, progress
