New Floors - Day 8 - Part 1

Okay, I spoke to soon. 

Clearly.

I know I haven't checked in for a while, and there's a reason for that.  I haven't been able to stop the stream of obscenities that started on Day 8, which was a week ago tomorrow.  I haven't really gotten a good night's sleep since then, either.  And I have written and rewritten this blog post in my brain about a thousand times so that I can get ready for the Yelp review, the Angie's List post, the BBB complaint.

So.  Many.  Things.  Have.  Gone.  Wrong.

Let's start this shindig off with the beginning of the process.  Consider this whole line of blogs, all seven other, as an in medias res storyline.  Meaning I started somewhere in the middle and am now going to go back to the very beginning.  Back to the day we stepped into the first flooring shop with wide eyes and big ideas.

That day we met a very perky, very friendly sales woman who eagerly showed us around the sales floor and we fell in love with dark, distressed wood and warm, multi-tonality carpet.  We scheduled the in-home flooring measurement right then and there.

A couple of days later, she showed up, measured all the rooms where there was to be hardwood or carpet, chatted away with me as she took notes, counted the stairs, asked if we wanted the carpet to go into the closets, if we wanted the wood in the upstairs closet, if we wanted the flooring to be floating or nailed or glued, if we wanted the tile removed everywhere, or just in front of the fireplace.  I answered all of her questions, we smiled and got more and more excited, she promised a quote soon.

The answers were yes to the carpet in the closets, yes to the wood in the coat closet, glued flooring over cork for noise control (that's what we do for a living.  We are noise consultants!  Noise abatement matters to us and we understand it!)  Yes to the tile removal. 

She informed me right away that the wood could not, by code, go up to the fireplace, that would need to be tile.  No problem!  I assured her.  That actually sounded fun, a nice accent for the space.

A few days later, the first quote came in.  I would paste it here to show you how very vague it was, but I'm not using this blog to make enemies.  Anyway, my opinion of that might be with hind sight.  At the time, it seemed like all the I's were dotted and T's were crossed.

Then, we had our quote with the Stair Guys.  The glorious, wonderful, thank you God for having them in our project, Stair Guys.  Kevin suggested we notch out the stringers, wrap the stairs, and use white MDF instead of wood on wood to get a nice, clean look.  (You can see this part of the story in New Floors - Day 6 - Part 1.) 

After some further discussion with the flooring company, it turns out that the same saleswoman didn't order enough stair nosing.  Or base boards (you read that right, BASEBOARDS.) And ordered bonkers amounts of too much wood.  It seems as though she took part of the first measure (wood stairs with wood facing between the stringers - hence the too much wood) and part of the second measure (some more stair nosings, but not enough stair nosings) and flew off into fairyland (you want baseboards on all your floors?)  Um, freaking yes I do!  She said, "Ok, that's another $400."  Um, no, it isn't.  Because we told you exactly what we wanted and you didn't order it.  After talking with her boss, the owner, I assume, she relayed to me that they would "absorb the cost." 

So, at this point, we have to specialty order new stair nosings, order (and find somewhere to paint?) new baseboards, and find someone to install the new baseboards because the original quote from the subcontractor was only for carpet demo, disposal, and install.  Not for baseboards.

And I haven't even gotten to the actual install yet.  I'm going to need a good editor for my Yelp review.