Hardwood Flooring

[Jimbo]

Last night, a fellow ww'er and myself were chatting about the costs of hardwood flooring. What it came down to essentially was that the retail costs of hardwood flooring seemed to be very high. $6 a square foot for 3/4 white oak for example works out to $8 a bf while retail that lumber will cost less than half that. Based on our very rough calculations and the retail prices we see around, manufacturers seem to be making a lot of money out of flooring, even assuming that retail markups are in the 60 - 75% range. Are we wrong about this?

This, of course, got us wondering if anybody on here has made their own flooring from rough and how it worked out.

J.

[Lew Hodgett]

For a manufactured product, if raw material cost gets much above 20%, as a business, you are in trouble.

Lew

[Joe]

Was at the local borg picking up the last of their 3 1/4" wide (red & white) oak flooring. Even pre-finished, it was only $2.97 per sq ft. Only $6 per sq ft price range I saw was for the more exotic stuff. Where were you pricing this?

jc

[Chris Friesen]

Careful with borg flooring. The local one had a sale on some prefinished birch.

It had zero warranty on the finish, and I could make permanent impressions in the wood just by running my fingernail across it.

No thanks...

Chris

[Jimbo]

On the Janko scale, Birich is 1260 compared to Red Oak at 1290, White Oak 1360 and Bamboo at 1800. Sounds like pretty poor stuff.

[Joe]

I would be careful of *any* flooring with no warranty, borg or not.

were you making impressions in the wood or in the finish? That'd be a mighty impressive (if that's the word) fingernail to dent birch.

jc

[Chris Friesen]

In the wood. My suspicion is that it isn't "real" birch, but some chinese wood that looks similar but is much softer.

Chris

[Leon]

If that is installed with a finish, that sounds cheap.

[DGDevin]

I just picked up a couple of B&D Workmates at an attractive price, I was surprised to see that the wooden portions are now made of bamboo. The fit on these was kind of poor, I had to drill a couple of holes to get some parts to assemble properly. Low price = low quality I suppose.

[B A R R Y]

I'm no cheerleader for BORGs, but over the summer, I bought genuine Bruce, prefinished solid 3/4" oak flooring, with a 25 year residential warranty, from Home Depot for $2.39 sq/ft.

My floor has exactly the same warranty as the same product selling at twice the price elsewhere.

I'd be careful, but there are decent deals to be had.

[B A R R Y]

That's interesting, as the bamboo flooring I've seen hasn't worn anywhere near as well as everyday red oak.

[D'ohBoy]

That value for the bamboo is for the non-'carbonized' bamboo. The chocolate brown stuff has been steamed to change the color and that process significantly reduces the hardness of the material. Which is why I went for the natural color in a Phillipines-harvested bamboo which is noticeably darker than other bamboos. Course, they all darken with exposure to light.

D'ohBoy

[B A R R Y]

Interesting...

The dented and creased floors I've seen are all carbonized.

Thanks for the info!

[Jimbo]

If you happen to have 300 - 400 sq. feet left over, I'd be happy to take it off your hands :)

[Skip Williams]

Barry,

We bought 45 cases of the same Bruce flooring from HD for $2.55/sq' . Pretty good stuff!

I put it down in the master bedroom, hallway, dining room, kitchen and foyer. I had 5 cases left over that I was going to take bck. LOML says...why dont we just get 3 more cases and you can do the lining room as well...:-( ...sigh....

Skip

[Joe]

Skip

Good luck if it was the 3 1/4" marsh. Bruce is no longer making it . I know I bought up the last of it in my area.

jc

[B A R R Y]

Get this...

I returned 10 boxes in October, and I had lost the receipt.

After apologizing that they couldn't refund the sales tax and my refund would be on a gift card, they refunded it @ $2.99 sq.ft. ;^)

[B A R R Y]

I'm very happy with it. VERY low waste in each box. Nice, straight stuff, with only a few ugly boards that were still usable for closets. We've had a few OOPS! moments since installation, and the finish is fine.

I did the downstairs with unfinished stock, which I sanded and finished, and had a far greater waste percentage. I paid MORE for the unfinished stock than I did for the finished Bruce!

[Nova]

Strand woven Bamboo 3200 Natural Bamboo (represents one species) 1380 Carbonized Bamboo (represents one species) 1180

The hardness of bamboo also depends on when (years maturity) the bamboo is harvested and what species of bamboo is used.

For comparing: Cumaru / Brazilian Teak 3540 White Oak 1360 Red Oak (Northern) 1290 Black Walnut 1010