So does anyone here know anything about flooring?
Real quick synopsis:
Few weeks ago toliet water supply burst, flooded my floors. I have laminate wood. Insurance company is going to replace the entire wood flooring that extends through about half the house.
Got a great deal on some real wood flooring.
Flooring company is now wanting to charge about $500 more than the cost of their quote for installation just to pull up the old flooring (Which is jus laminate wood. It's not glued down at all. You can yank it up with one hand.)
Which is funny. Because the NEW flooring -is- glue down. So that makes their estimate even odder.
So lets say the quote for putting the new flooring down is $800. The quote for the removal of the old flooring would be $1300. These aren't real numbers. Just an example. I could pull up all the flooring myself but..umm.. I am busy with work and really, my insurance company gave me money for someone else to deal with that.
Is this reasonable? Is pulling up flooring really more expensive than laying it?
Basically I was expecting the tear up of the old flooring to cost like....a tenth of what they quoted. And according to my insurance quote..it should be.
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i was able to do it at 15-16 with minimal difficulty in about 5-6 hrs. that's pulling up the old floor, cutting new tile and laying it down. mind, not the best job, but it held up pretty well.
i would honestly suggest doing it yourself on an off day. nothing like doing the work yourself. every time you go to the bathroom you get this feeling of "YES! I DID THIS!"
Yeah but I already said in my original post I didn't have time to do this. Moreover, I don't want to do it. I get zero satisfaction out of home improvement. Thirdly, my insurance company gave me money for someone else to do this. Fourthly, it's not just the bathroom. They're replacing three rooms and two hallways worth of flooring.
I'd like to request that nobody else tell me to "do it myself". I meant to do that in the OP.
Kind of disappointed.
If removal estimates are a lot higher than insurance is paying, I hope you haven't signed anything or cashed the check.
I did deposit the check but I did not sign anything and my insurance company sent a letter with the check and estimate detailing what I need to do/prove if I need more money.
my answer still stands without the do it yourself part
it's easy
get a different quote
by all means, shop around, and make sure your contractor knows exactly what work needs to be done. but you're not talking about huge numbers here, and installing floating floorboards (i'm assuming they're floating floorboards) is a quick, in and out job for a professional. removing floorboards is a quick, in and out job with a skip-load of industrial waste.
This is one of the small parts of my job. Its called emergency demolition. From my experience insurance companies have their preferred restoration companies, or a contract with one. Get another quote, unless the insurance company recommended the flooring company.
The emergency company (servepro) only ripped up the flooring that was wet. The insurance adjuster that came out later determined that my entire floor had to be replaced because they no longer produced the flooring I had down so it couldn't be repaired.
I'll just give you guys the real numbers and get rid of examples.
The cost of installation for the new glue down flooring is $1300.
The cost they're trying to sell me on for the removal of 600sq ft of floating flooring is $1800.
I watched the servepro guys tear up a good 20% of that flooring in like..10 minutes worth of labor (they took longer because they were being careful to only yank damaged floor.)
Even with waste disposal it boggles my mind. I just found a hardwood flooring website that quotes floating flooring removal at 1.00s/f which would be 500ish bucks, and since this is Mississippi, it's probably 25-50% less than that if that average is correct.