Flooring Recommendation I have a few rooms I want to put waterproof plank flooring in. Looking for reasonabley priced recommendations for sales and install. Looked at...
Fuzzy1968 replied:
Don't use Home Depot. The same person is never there, so each new person has to catch up with what the previous person did. That led to confusion and mistakes. I had to drive down there *five times* before they got my order right. (Three rooms, two different flooring) *Tip: whatever room they're cutting pieces in, cover everything with sheets or drop cloths. They don't do that for you.
Dirty-Hernandez replied:
I use Lumber liquidators, with a trick that has saved me thousands over the years with my rentals.
Their flooring is all pretty high quality and reasonably priced. Get them during a sale and use this tip and you won't find anything better around. And like the other person said, DO NOT use Home Depot or Lowes - they hire the worst, they are the worst, and you'll end up fighting them at some point.
So with LL, they screw their installation teams over, hard (all box stores do). The installers make, at best, 1/3 of the price you pay. All of them subcontract private installers - they are not employees of Home Depot, or Lowes, or LL.
Here's what you do. You have them come out and measure everything, they'll charge you a couple of hundred (tops) but this gets applied as a credit to your invoice. Buy all the flooring from them, making sure to get the installation measurements. After you purchase, and you have the measurements in-hand(!) tell them you only want them to install one or two rooms and pick these. Tell them you are planning to do the rest yourself but you want this one or two rooms done. So you pay full price for a room or two, you have all the flooring you need for the whole place. LL doesn't care as long as you are buying the product. Installation is just a bonus for them.
When the installers come out, simply tell them you are planning to do the rest yourself because it's too expensive. They will usually do the rest of the install at about 40% the cost. I haven't had one person I've suggested this to have this not work.
I prefer to support local businesses but I believe this helps the people working locally more than it helps Lumber Liquidators' CEO.
Knothead_djh replied:
I have an uncle who works in residential flooring.