Product expectations and sustainability

I was out for a run this morning and I saw a jobsite/retaining wall that looked like a hurricane had come through. In fact, it appeared that maybe the retaining wall was started and maybe the contractor was asked to leave possibly. It made me really think about how many projects, products, or services are partially or fully completed and then torn out for one of many possible reasons. Was the job oversold and under-delivered? Was the contractor's experience not up to par with the requirements of the homeowner? I know few fellow contractors who would ante up for this one. Was there a good match of product performance with customer expectations?

Everyday I hear the words green and sustainable tossed around in an attempt to create customer buzz and sell a job. If the project was loaded with green and sustainable products, but had to be torn out and redone, this is in no way a sustainable process. I would urge readers of this blog who are contractors or retailers to consider that quality is a willingness to provide the best product and service ONE time for a price that provides a good living without compromising project fulfillment and product performance. In my eyes this is a vastly overlooked component of being a sustainable home services provider.

Experience, wisdom, and the whole nine yards

I began to think about what defines a quality contractor the other day and it led me to start thinking about how you define quality. I would say that quality is obtained when you determine exactly what the client wants in a product or service and afterwards you deliver the equivalent amount of service.

This is where wisdom and experience come in because without a combination of these two you really wouldn't be able to deliver quality. I often hear a lot of "experienced" "floor guys" talk about how long they have been in the business. You'll hear companies talk about how between the two or three owners they have over 40 years of experience. That's nice but if you never educate yourself as a contractor then you really only have one year of experience repeated 40 times.

True professionals are judged on multiple facets in my opinion. A professional is someone who is constantly seeking to improve their service by continuing education, adopting newer and more efficient tools and methods, and shares their knowledge with others for the good of the industry. Additionally I would suggest that a true professional wakes up everyday with a passion to do their job and has an empathy towards the vision of the homeowner and their expectation of service.

Well, well, well this leads us to a rarely mentioned word in the blue collar world called wisdom. Everytime you hear the word wise you probably think about some old man in a rocking chair with a head of grey hair talking about his experiences in life. I would say experience is a component of wisdom but not the whole enchilada. An acuity for the details of a process as related to your past experiences would somewhat make you wise in my book. The only caveat is that the person engaged in this process must be guided in a way so that their observation for detail is governed by honesty and genuine empathy for the customer.

I know this blog may seem somewhat esoteric, but when I look forward to every new day in becoming a more wise hardwood flooring professional I have to think about what rules I adhere to in aiming for continued success. If you find yourself a reader of this blog, then I would like for you to know more about the person behind the company than what I do for a living.

What's the value of hiring a professional?

For about a week or so around my home I had a broken faucet in the sink. The sprayer head had simply broken off and it was a little tricky to use but worked. Despite how busy I am I decided to do the task myself and save some money. Well, I must say that the end result was that the sink was fixed, but I almost messed the faucet up by doing the work because I am not a plumber, I am a hardwood professional.

It seems like a fine point, but not really. You see, for a period of time I kept stalling and managing to deal with a less than ideal faucet until I could make the time to fix it. The day that I did manage to fix the sink was quite an adventure. I came home in a rush and tried to install the sink. I sort of glazed over the directions and managed to put the sink in and it took two tries to do improperly. I rushed out the door for a networking event and returned at 8:30pm and tried one final time to fix the sink and was successful this time. Thank you to my wife for being the brains the third time around. During the removal of the faucet the second time I almost stripped the brass threads that connect the faucet to the sink. Through some frustrating moments I managed to get the sink installed after a third attempt. I love the sink.

You may ask why a hardwood floor guy is talking about plumbing and a sink. If I had actually realized what I REALLY should do and call my plumber friend and pay his company to install the new faucet I would have saved time and frustration. In addition I almost destroyed a $120 faucet due to my less than par plumbing knowledge. Sometimes there is a reason to call a qualified professional because they have the tools and knowledge to do things right the first time. I learned on this one and won't make the mistake again.

To salvage or not to salvage that is the question!

One of the latest rages in hardwood flooring materials is to use salvaged flooring materials. As you know we are all fans of the motto "reduce, reuse, recycle". The word reuse is in play with salvaged materials and there are some things to consider when you reuse material that was already an existing floor.

Most hardwood floors have approximately 6-10 sandings available depending on the type of material and the aggressiveness of the sanding. Less dense hardwood floors such as old growth fir may be closer to six available sandings whereas a more dense material such as Brazilian cherry may be able to be sanded up to 10 times.

Keep in mind that every wood floor is connected to a subfloor, which is connected to the foundation of a home. While homes settle and shift over the years the hardwood floor follows suit. After a few sandings and a number of years your wood floors may be sanded to a thinner dimension in a hallway than in a bedroom, etc...

The salvaging process that we speak of is the removal and reassembly of an existing wood floor into a new area or home. When you remove and reassemble a floor that has been sanded multiple times, the true variances that are exascerbated by the settling process will be even greater. In reality when you reassemble a salvaged wood floor, there is an extreme amount of what we refer to as "over/under wood". This greater amount of variance requires a greater amount of sanding in order to achieve a flat wood floor.

So what does all of this mean? If you install a salvaged wood floor in your home the consequences are good for the environment and possibly bad because you will need to pay more for the floor to be sanded because there is more effort to remove the necessary material to achieve a flat floor. A second consequence of the additional sanding efforts is that your floor will be closer to the end of its lifespan. This is especially important because with all of the interest in people requesting salvaged wood floors these days, after sanding I am seeing floors that literally have no more sandings available because there is virtually a paper thin wear layer remaining.

It is most important for me as an ethical wood flooring professional to advise you that salvaged wood floors have a lesser value for the life cycle of your project because of the greater reduction in wear layer. If you choose to use salvaged flooring, then I have two suggestions. The first suggestion is to either remill the flooring material or have flooring milled from dimensional lumber. The other suggestion is that if you choose to reuse salvaged flooring material without doing a remilling that you adhere to a very strict maintenance schedule of recoating the finish on your floor. This will greatly prolong the life of the wear layer of your floor and add more value to your efforts.

Why can't you sand that old fir floor?

All the time I meet different people for an estimate who assume that their old Fir floors cannot be refinished, so they think that they will install new flooring over the floors. Usually the floors have been covered in paint, carpet, or linoleum forever and as time has gone on people have realized the best looking of their options is a wood floor. One important thing to understand about the floor sanding process is that usually only 1/32" to 1/16" of flooring actually is removed during sanding. If you consider that a wear layer on a floor is typically 5/16" and a quality refinish will endure 10-20 years of wear with proper maintenance, then you can see that most floors ,even those that are 100 years old or greater, have some remaining life. I have seen some of the worst hardwood floors be revived in 5 days to a state of beauty that few would expect. My answer is almost always, "Yes, you can sand that old Fir floor!". It's more cost effective and has less impact on the environment because you reuse an existing resource.

Who cares about the mill?

Years ago, I had an experience that made me care more about the milling tolerances for products I install. The floor was a 5" hickory floor that the homeowner purchased online from some mill in another state. I rarely am asked by a customer or general contractor to install hardwood material that my company does not provide. In this case, I agreed to install the material and made a mistake of assuming the quality was good. This turned out to be a major mistake because on average one out of every three boards was milled 1/16-1/8" to wide or too narrow. This may seem trivial until you consider that forcing this material to become straight was virtually impossible. The floor may appear to be straight and well sealed early on, but after a few seasons of an improper fit the boards will win out over the fasteners and cause a loose floor. To the bargain hunters of flooring material, there is often a reason the price is too good to be true. A low price is a likely indicator of mis-milled product that was sold to reduce inventory for a mill, distributor, or retailer.

Acclimation....How Long?

If there has ever been one wood flooring question with a great deal of answers, it is: "How long should I acclimate the flooring?" I've heard everything from overnight to 2 weeks. The truth is that you want the flooring to be acclimated to the point where it will no longer lose or gain moisture while being acclimated within the area of installation. Sometimes wood flooring is within a moisture content that is compatible with the sub-floor as soon as it arrives at the jobsite. Other times, it may take 2-4 weeks for the wood to be at an acceptable moisture level. Two driving factors affecting these numbers are how well the HVAC system is working and what species of wood is to be installed.

A few things to keep in mind:
1) Wood flooring should NEVER be acclimated within the garage of your home.
2) Never install or acclimate your flooring at a temperature that is less than 5 degrees of where you keep the interior temperature of your home.
3) If your flooring is strip flooring, then the subfloor and wood flooring must have moisture levels that vary by no greater than 4%. This number should be less for wider flooring.

These suggestions are for solid hardwood flooring. Flooring materials such as engineered and laminate flooring do not apply to these rules. E-mail us with further questions.