To address the original question
Irvine Seeker said:
1) The kitchen extends to the dining room and will have basic travertine tiles with the carpet in the living room. it's a long rectangular great room setting with the living on the other side. Any pros and cons on having wood flooring in the kitchen instead of tiles? Would you take all tiles out or just dining area and keep the tiles in the kitchen? Keeping tiles will save me some money but with 2/3 is tile and 1/3 is carpet, just having wooden floor in the living room only may look little odd...
You have some useful responses already. To echo some of them, I think the choice to split or not to split the great room flooring (aka kitchen/dinning/living room) comes down to personal preference. Model homes these days seem to have kitchen/dining/great room setups with all the same flooring. It makes the room feel continuous/larger/common space-y I think. But like you said, leaving the tiles will save you some money. But then again, you might need to sell the house one day and that kitchen / great room area will be one of the first things the buyer sees.
You're seeing the carpet/tile split as the standard option because (a) carpet is the absolute cheapest option the builder can sell the house with and (b) the builder claims they are not allowed to sell a house with carpet in 'wet' areas, so they put tile there. I don't think it's a design choice, but I'm the wrong person to ask about good flooring design
Irvine Seeker said:
2) Got a couple of estimates. A well known with good review company's rough estimate was about $25k with 5 day working. Another smaller company through friends' referral (they got the flooring done and are happy with) is more reasonable for about $14k with 3 day working. For a 2000 sq ft, brand new, empty house, is 3 day long enough or 5 day is too long? Thank you.
Honestly the best advice I've heard from people who do contracting for a living is "get three estimates, take the one in the middle". Also, try considering the cost on a price per square foot basis (project cost / sqft). Do some googling of "how much should it cost to install xxxx" for some rough comparisons.
I don't know at all what you're buying or estimating based on, but my mid/upper range engineered wood and glue was about $6.5/sqft from State College Distributors. I demolished and disposed with a friend (would not recommend, it's exhausting and dirty). Trim material and labor for final prep and install by SC Flooring Services (good guys, 8 out of 10, would recommend) was about $5/sqft, painting and supplies (friend) was about $0.50/sqft.
I think anywhere from $6 to $10 /sqft is in the range for the cost of labor including demo, disposal, install, trim, and misc supplies (glue/thinset). Kind of a wide range right? Don't hang your hat on those numbers, just a guess there.
It's pretty normal for a contractor to mark up materials for the service of purchase & delivery. You can buy the materials direct (there are many outlets in Anaheim on state college blvd), but you'll have to do your homework and have a contractor willing to communicate and ensure the two of you bring all correct materials to the job site on time.
You may want to
1) Confirm EXACTLY what the estimates include. How many people will be working? does it include demolishing? disposal? flattening? materials? installing the trim? painting the trim? touching up any other damage they do while they're working?
2) Ask them for proof of insurance. Some contractors can offer lower prices b/c they neglect to insure their workers or their general liability.
3) Look them up via their contractor license number to see if there's any issues.
4) Ask them for a referral who you can contact about their work and/or ask to see some pictures of their prior work. If you speak with the referral ask if they've had to come back for any repairs and understand what those repairs were. Try to get a feel for how detailed their work was if that's important to you. If you haven't already, look very closely at the work the cheap option did for your friend. How is the finishing? Is the floor flat? High spots? Low spots? Does it creek? Bend? Are there excessive amounts of loud/echo-y areas (if you knock on it)?
As far as time line goes, maybe they can get it done in 3 days with extra help on the demolishing/disposal, 2-4 fantastic guys to prep and lay the wood/tile, and the fastest drying glue/thinset (can't walk on the floors for at least a day as they dry) so the finishers (trim, paint) can do their thing asap. 3 days seems like best case scenario. 5 days gives a reasonable cushion for unanticipated delays and good detailed work, but it really shouldn't take any longer than 5 days with the right labor and planning.
For reference, my demolishing took an unreasonable amount of time, level compound took a day to dry, floor and stair install took three days (or was it 2? I forget), paint took a half day. Flooring installer came back once to repair a high spot.
If you're curious at all about what the contractors will likely do
1) Bust the tile with a sledge/jack/regular hammer and scrape the concrete glue (called "thinset") off the slab. The speed this can be done depends on how the tile was installed. Maybe they used too much thinset like mine and it takes extra effort to scrape it off. You don't really know until you start.
2) Remove the carpet, pad, tack strips, and scrape the glue off the slab
3) Dispose of the thousand or so pounds of concrete/carpet/thinset/etc
4) *Maybe* Again, don't know if this is necessary until all the carpet/tile is off. Make sure they check the hard surface manufacturer's recommendation for minimum flatness and check your slab. Flatten the slab to spec where the carpet used to be. The slab in this area likely has peaks and valleys out of spec for hard surface install. This is a pretty normal thing. The builder doesn't need to flatten the slab under carpet to the same degree they need to under the tile. The contractor can use leveling compound to fill the valleys (easy, cheap, gets the job done, but needs 24 hours minimum to dry) and/or use a machine to scrape the high spots (no drying time, but this machinery is expensive, and makes a lot of dust).
5) Lay down the hard surface & glue. Wood can go pretty quick. Tile might go slower, depending on how close the grout lines are.
6) Depending on whether the workers demolished/removed the baseboards or not, install new baseboards or install trim to cover the gap between the new flooring and old baseboards.
7) Mask and paint the new trim/baseboards
8 ) Clean thoroughly, touch up any misc issues
Good luck!
