What to get new flooring in your home? Are you thinking about carpet or hard surface? Not sure where to start or how to measure your space? There are many different scenarios when getting new flooring. Let us help you break down what will take place throughout this project.
Carpet will always be less expensive, mainly because the prep work of carpet is not as labor intensive as hard floors. There still can be areas and types of carpet jobs that will cost more, such as installing on cement, custom stairs, carpet tiles or squares or boardering carpets within carpets, but for the most part, carpet is less expensive when looking at different flooring options.
Some Flooring Stores will list carpet prices per Square Yard or maybe Square Foot. Let's talk about this for a moment. Carpet comes from the manufacture on a roll about 12 feet wide. s Sometimes it is 11'9" other days it is closer to 12' and sometimes it is only 11'5".Rarely have I ever seen it come in a usable width of 12". No matter what it comes as, you always pay 12" pricing. (There are few exceptions that come 15". but that is not the norm.)
So let's pretend your room is 11'5" wide and 10" long. The total square footage of that space is 120square feet. 12x10= 120
If the store is giving the square foot price, you take that price and multiply it by 120sq feet to get the cost of the carpet product.
For instance: $5.58 sqf x 120 sf = $669.60
If the store is giving you the square yard cost, then you have to convert one of the numbers to match the others....take your total square footage and divide it by 9.
120 / by 9=13.3333 so let's do 13.4
Now take your square yard price of $50.99 and multiply that by the square yards...
$50.99 x 13.4 = $683.27
They come out the same basically, but you just have to do the math conversion.
Remember, there may be a cost for take out, disposal, install of pad, cost of pad product, carpet install and carpet product....It is not as easy as one calculation. Some homes you have to take closet doors off and on, or cut doors down, move furniture? Prep the floor and remove tile or glue....a lot goes into doing the job correctly....
Some labor the home owner may want to do themselves, such as take out and disposal. Or maybe the job calls for a toilet to be removed. Maybe you are a good plumber and want to do that yourself. It may be the perfect time to upgrade the toilet to a taller seat or more water efficient model.
Hard surface flooring could have many more steps.
If hard surface is replacing carpet, you must first remove the carpet and the pad. Next remove all the staples that held the carpet down. Remove the tack strip along the walls. The baseboards should come off and then will get replaced on top of the hard flooring. Sometimes we can find where you know two hard surfaces have been placed on top of each other, because the floor trim gives away the secret. If you have put a quarter round down in front of the baseboard, that normal tells there was a "cheat" done. Either it is the second layer of hard surface- the first went with the base board and the second went with the quarter round to trim the edge or the baseboards were never moved and the quarter round was placed to hide the detail of it.
A baseboard only is the proper install on top of hard surface, but it may be costly to take the original base off, repaint the wall, and the labor to replace the board product or labor to replace the original back to the wall.
There is always the right way to do it, a way you can make work and a way you can get away with. Which install option do you want?
Hard surface then can have more...of course.... once the old flooring is up, the installer would want to check if the subfloor is level. There may be some prep work of leveling that may need to be done. A new subfloor of hardwood may need to be added to heighten the floor to match the height of another floor in the home, or depending on the new flooring type. Glue down flooring can not be glued to OSB wood, due to the OSB giving away/ ripping apart over time.
Once the floor is prepped, toilets are pulled or other items readied, the install can take place. The install may be a floating floor, glued down or clicked together. Different types of flooring call for different installs. Let the installer finish, replace the baseboards, toilets and other items and you will have a new space!
Hard surface is mainly priced in square feet. You always have to purchase according to what is in the flooring box of course and you should always have some extra (10% of the flooring job) is recommended. So for instance, you have a living room to be redone with LVT planking that is 22x 15 = 330 sqf. The product is sold in boxes of 32.25 sqf, therefore you need 330/ 32.25 = 10.25 boxes. In the end you need 11 to 12 boxes of flooring depending of angles and cuts. Let's use the numbers an the larger scale, just incase the installer needs the most- therefore your purchase price would be 12 boxes of 32.23 = 387square feet...NOW, you can add your price
LVT price is $2.99sqf x 387 sqf = $1158 for LVT product Only. If you find a LVT that you love that is $6, of course it will be double in cost.
Why do some LVTs cost for?
One word...Quality. I have seen many big box stores selling LVT with a 4 mil layer. The mil layer is the thickness of the protection. The LVT we have at our store ranges from 12-40 mill. We don't have you to have a problem. This is commercial grade.
Some LVTs have an additional coating that makes the top layer even stronger. You many think you don't need a thick mil layer, but I have seen many times homes with scratches in front of the refrigerator. The wheel either got stuck or a stone was under the wheel while pulling it forward. Thin mills will have an issue very very quickly. New installs are a lot of work. Pay the extra and do it right the first time! You will wish you had once the problems come.