Hi,

Please Help! I have several questions.

I currently have Mannington Island Chestnut (Cumaru) installed in my study, dining and living room. Overall, I like it but sometimes when the sunlight is very intense it looks as if the ends are cupping slightly. When the light is less intense it looks fine. When I run my fingers over the ends they feel flat! What the!?

Anyway, I now want to install hardwood in my family room and possibly my foyer. Because these areas connect to the areas with the existing hardwood I need the same color wood. I don't really want to use the Mannington product again because it was very hard to install. The installer said it was one of the hardest jobs he'd had although I think I should've got a better installer too (for reasons I won't get into in this post). The milling was poor, it was very hard to get the boards to fit together - it was a really tight fit, and a lot of the boards were bowed (at the ends) and that's probably why it appears that some of the ends are cupping! The product is engineered, unstained and was a gluedown over concrete. I'd also like to attempt the install myself (but will probably float it instead since it's more DIY friendly). I'd like to find a product that's similar in color so that the areas look uniform. I need it to be engineered and preferably not stained.

Have any of the installers here worked with the mannington Island Chestnut? What was your experience like? Do you think I just need a better installer? Would there be a noticeable different in "feel" between the glue down and floating? I don't think I've ever walked on a floated hardwood floor before or if I have I didn't know it!

Have you ever been to jobs where the home has different colored hardwoods in different rooms? If I can't get a similar product the I may just do the family room in hardwood but leave the foyer and the little 4 foot hallway connecting the study to the family room tiled. Even though the family room and other hardwood areas can all be seen from the foyer, at least the different woods wouldn't be right next to each other. Would that still look odd? I'd get a color as close to the mannington as I could of course.

Thanks for any advice you can give!

Dee

I don't know about your installer, but Mannington is top shelf, unless things have changed recently.

I have never had one concern with any Mannington floor I have installed. The milling has been excellent and very few cull boards. It went together with ease, everytime I have installed it.

They are the tightest floors I have installed.

I thought Mannington was supposedly a good brand too but honestly, this guy was really having to fight to get the planks together. Any chance that this particular product line is manufactured elsewhere than Manningtons other hardwoods???

When I moved into my home, there was another new construction finishing up behind our house. We went to check it out and they were installing Mannington Jamestown and they were breezing through it! Clicking it together with ease. Nothing like what went on with the Island Chestnut!

How much blue tape were your installers using?

ummm...NONE! Don't get me started on this installer I noticed the other installers doing things at the house behind mine that I never saw my installer do. Blue tape was one of them.

My jobs look like a blue taped monster when I'm done for the day! It holds everything tight while the adhesive sets up over night. It doesn't bother me to walk across the installation either.

The next morning, I pull tape. Wipe down any glue spots I missed during the installation the day prior, and buff the surface. Then I start all over where I left off the day before, and create another blue tape monster.


If they didn't use blue tape at all. No wonder it was a nightmare for them. Any gluedown wood installation would have been.

Thanks Floorguy.

My installer also said that there were so many bowed planks (and there really were because he showed them to me) that if he didn't use some of them we wouldn't have enough wood for the job and we had bought plenty of extra wood. Now I don't know if this is BS or not but he said that can sometimes happen when lots and lots of boxes are stacked on top of each other in warehouses. Ever heard of that before?

Also he didn't use that little roller thingy (don't know what it's really called! ) that is in one of your pics. What does that gadget do?

With blue tape, bowed boards are no problem, to an extenet.

If boards are left in unopened cartons, they will not bow.


That is a 100# floor roller. The adhesive I was using on that job(Taylor 2071) called for rolling of the flooring to make sure good transfer into the adhesive takes place. Not all adhesives require it. I still roll all my gluedown installations, even if the glue bucket says it is not needed with their adhesive. Not long ago it was mandatory to roll all gluedown wood installations.

Thanks, Floorguy! hmm well it sounds like I probably just do need a better installer for the next job!

Question for you:

If you quote a price for a job ( I don't mean floor prep because I realize that's usually charged hourly - I mean for the actual laying of the wood) and you write up a contract which is agreed to and signed. Then, after you start the job you think, "gee this wood is harder to lay than I thought" , do you/would you try to increase your price or do you stick to what was agreed, provided that you were informed about the type of wood etc you would be installing before the agreement was made?

Our installer whined and tried to charge us more after the he started the job even though he knew all the details of the job beforehand. We would not and did not pay him any more than we agreed to because we felt that it was unethical on his part and also because he also did a crap job of prepping the floor which we paid him good money to do a good job on - I have dips and bumps all over the place.

Would just like to hear your take on this.

If the flooring was first quality goods it should have gone together with little effort. If the flooring was defective to the point you were going to run out of material you should have taken it back to the people who sold it to you and asked for a repalcement. As a professional the installer has to know what is acceptable because once you put it down on the floor its been deemed aceptable goods and its your baby. Dont ever continue on with a flooring job if you know the floor has problems, all you doing is making it worse. About changing the price after a contract has been agreed upon thats a bit of a touchy subject, he did bid the job based on quality material if thats not what you got I would be looking at the manufacture for some type of restitution not the buyer.

If I have a contract price, I grin and bare it. Whiners have excuses for everything.

I know full well what I'm getting into, well before I set a price. My proposals are pretty specific. So everyone knows what is what.

Hi Dee,

One of your questions was about having different wood in different rooms. Personally, I no more want the same wood in all my downstairs rooms than I want the same carpet in all my bedrooms. (unless the floor plan is VERY open)

While you may want certain rooms to flow together and the same floor can enhance that, other rooms should have their own distinct personality. For example, a family room might have somewhat casual floor, a living room or formal dining room would want a more elegant wood, and in an office you might want something different.

I have different wood in different rooms, but I am a renovator and a designer so each of my rooms has a different theme to showcase my work. Not to mention I use my home as my showroom, so it works for me. It looks good if you transition your woods correctly borders can do wonders for transitioning to different species. It is inexpensive given that you are only using 3 to 6 foot of border in most applications.

Thanks for your responses!

Well I'm now convinced it was an installer issue. For my own piece of mind I pulled out some boards that I had left over in the attic (the install was done almost 2 years ago). I took them inside, sat on the carpet and put a few together. I really didn't have a problem with any of the boards. Some of them were very slightly bowed but we're not talking bowed like bananas! Just very slight. SO, I'm thinking that the fact he didn't use tape coupled with the fact that he did a poor job of ensuring the floor was flat ( I assume a bumpy floor would also make for a difficult job) it's no wonder he had such a darn hard time! Oh and I also did suggest to him that we should return the wood if it was such terrible quality and he said no he didn't think we needed to. In hindsight I think it's because he knew it wasn't that bad, he was just whining and perhaps exaggerating the problem.

Anyway, I'd like to use the same wood ultimately but I'm not planning to install for another 6 months or so, so I have a few months to really think about it!

Thanks again for your help!

Dee