How To Deal With Hardwood Floor Installers – Questions You Should Ask To a Flooring Contractor

The decision to rely on a flooring contractor for the installation of your new acquisition is rarely an unwise one, but that doesn’t mean there are no risks involved either. Hardwood floor installers may differ from one another substantially and the vast amount of available services doesn’t make it easier to decide who to call upon. This task can be simplified by taking a certain approach and getting yourself involved more actively in the process.

Normally you have a couple of choices when it comes to hiring a flooring contractor. Your floor supplier is most likely to have its own team of installers and the benefit of that is they are experienced with working with the same flooring brand as yours. They may also cost a little bit less because you bought the floor from the company they work for. There is of course some bias involved in the sense that your floor seller would do anything to promote their crew to you so don’t spend money on someone else.

Another choice would looking at a list of installers that your flooring supplier may present to you or direct you to. This is always a reasonable choice, especially when you live in a distant area that’s not covered by the flooring company. If you are lucky, there will be someone living close to your place.

One more very good choice available these days are online contractor hire services. You can find a contractor for just about any type of house work, flooring included, and you can specify the region in which you need the job done and get a list of available contractors as a result.

You can look at all the possibilities of course, but to make things easier, the best way to decide is to call or write to installers you have in mind and ask them sufficient amount of questions in order to gain an insight if they’re someone you can trust and rely on. Here are some example questions you should consider asking any flooring contractor you contact with:

• Are they experienced with installing the same type of floor as yours?
• Can they point out to a list of their past customers who they worked for and preferably testimonials and ways to contact those people?
• Is there a portfolio of photos of jobs the contractor has done before that you can look at?
• How far or near from your place are they located?
• Is there any guarantee or percentage of success rate they can honestly give you for the quality of flooring installation?
• Do they possess an insurance to cover expenses in the case of problems before, during and after the installation job?
• Do they have a reference in the Better Business Bureau so you can verify them? (for US and Canada only)

Of course, feel free to ask anything else you may think of. The more you ask, the more confidence and understanding you’d build for each of the floor installers. That way you can assert the level of trust to each one of them before deciding who to hire for the job.

One more thing you should be prepared for when having a discussion with flooring contractors is that they’re very likely to ask you some things in return. In fact, the more they ask, the better, as this would show you they are really involved into this type of work and the quality of the finished work is important to them. So make sure to have the knowledge and information to answer any of the following questions, which are what regular contractor tend to ask:

• What is the type of the floor material you want installed?
• What is the type of floor installation? Finished or unfinished hardwood planks, floating, glued or nailed install?
• Do you have any requirements for the brands of the materials used, such as glue and nails? (sometimes the warranty demands the use of certain brands too)
• If you want your new floor installed over your current one, what is its type, condition, age? Do you want it removed or used as a sub-floor?
• What, if any, are your preferences for the floor underlayment?
• What is the base size of the premises that are going to be covered? (some contractors may rely on metric and other on imperial units, so have both values at hand)
• Where do you reside?
• Do you have a preferred deadline and time limit for the flooring installation job?

You should have a pretty good picture in your mind on who you can trust and rely on by this stage, so go ahead and ask for a quotation. Keep in mind that the price is rarely completely fixed, so once you have a short list of installers, you may try and get a cheaper service out of them by simply asking for concession. More than often the contractors can offer to skip certain stages of the work and thus ask for less.