Flooring with Outside Contractor

[ZeroLot]

My floors are done!! Woohoo!!  LOVE the details Venetian took on my floors.  I love the gorgeous 22 degree angles for the base boards in the Great Room.  The base boards also curved to match the 6" baseboards on the stairs. 

If I was going to find a gripe it would be the Venetian crew wasn't friendly like the other crews I worked with this week.  When I came into visit and say hi, most of them ignored me.  The one guy that took the time to noticed my existence asked me if I had a question.  I said I didn't have any and he walked away. 

Eric was the only one that cared enough to say more than 5 words to me.  Yet the crew had no problem playing a game of painter's tape ball in my Great Room with me standing right there.

It felt very uncomfortable for me to be in my house with the Venetian crew.  They obviously didn't want me to be there. 

However Venetian has more than 5 crews working at any one time, I may have just gotten unlucky with that particular crew.  Anyhow the work is done and it does look beautiful.

 

[qwerty]

when the crew arrived you should have said "buenos dias" and handed out carne asada burritos and you would have been their best friend.

 

[ZeroLot]

when the crew arrived you should have said "buenos dias" and handed out carne asada burritos and you would have been their best friend.

I arrived to try to hand them a check because they were closing shop.  Obviously I should have just had carne asada burritos.  It sure would have been cheaper.

 

[Chairman]

My floors are done!! Woohoo!!  LOVE the details Venetian took on my floors.  I love the gorgeous 22 degree angles for the base boards in the Great Room.  The base boards also curved to match the 6" baseboards on the stairs. 

If I was going to find a gripe it would be the Venetian crew wasn't friendly like the other crews I worked with this week.  When I came into visit and say hi, most of them ignored me.  The one guy that took the time to noticed my existence asked me if I had a question.  I said I didn't have any and he walked away. 

Eric was the only one that cared enough to say more than 5 words to me.  Yet the crew had no problem playing a game of painter's tape ball in my Great Room with me standing right there.

It felt very uncomfortable for me to be in my house with the Venetian crew.  They obviously didn't want me to be there. 

However Venetian has more than 5 crews working at any one time, I may have just gotten unlucky with that particular crew.  Anyhow the work is done and it does look beautiful.

Awesome! Please post a pic or two so we can all drool at your new floors.

 

[ZeroLot]

Here's some pics of my new floor:

Urban Maple Sunset:

22 degree turn on the baseboard:

Extra detail to matching up with the stairs larger crown molding:

Flooring in the kitchen area + Dunn Edwards Paint + Casearstone

 

[lnc]

Nice floors!!  That hand-scraped hardwood looks amazing!

Was the wall painted when you took these pictures?  It doesn't look peachy to me.

 

[irvinehomeowner]

So Venetian did baseboards on your carpeted areas too?

 

[ZeroLot]

Nice floors!!  That hand-scraped hardwood looks amazing!

Was the wall painted when you took these pictures?  It doesn't look peachy to me.

Thanks.  I love the hand-scraped look too.  The walls you're looking at are either still not painted OR it's painted with semi-gloss Finest Silk color.

I had 4 different paint colors in the house.

So Venetian did baseboards on your carpeted areas too?

Yes Venetian installed my baseboards and I got to pick the style.

 

[bones]

.

 

[Chairman]

Thanks for sharing your photos. The floor looks really superb. Baseboards look sharp and I am sure you are beaming with pride. Why wouldn't you with that finished job? I hope mine turns out as well as yours!

 

[ZeroLot]

Everything looks great and well coordinated!  Especially like the crown and baseboards. Who did the crown?

The downstairs crown is a standard option through the builder.  Upstairs crown would be extra. 

Thanks for sharing your photos. The floor looks really superb. Baseboards look sharp and I am sure you are beaming with pride. Why wouldn't you with that finished job? I hope mine turns out as well as yours!

I am very pleased with the whole install.  The fact everything got done within a week is a miracle too.  Good luck with your upgrades!  ;D

I'm just waiting for Cabinets Plus to do their work and I'm set to move in!

 

[notTHEoc]

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[jrscgsr]

We just had our floors down in our new home in Pavilion Park with Venetian Flooring and just wanted to give a quick review of our overall experience.

We wanted to do our first floor with hardwood flooring and when we went to our first design center appointment (Vintage designs), we were floored by the pricing.  They quoted us $18xxx for approximately 1200 sq ft.  When I researched the brand of wood, I found it was $4/sq ft so I asked them to provide a breakdown of their pricing.  They refused and instead sent me a form letter explaining why going with the builder design center was an advantage and just inserted my name into the letter.  Needless to say I was not satisfied with their response and they finally relented with a 10% discount, which we promptly declined.

Using the resources of this forum, we contacted 3 flooring vendors (Venetian, Thompkins, OC flooring).  Eric at Venetian was the most straightforward, offering an everything included quote almost 35% less than the design center.  We visited Thompkins and OC Flooring and they kept itemizing all the different costs, from demolition of tile, ripping up carpet, installation, baseboards, etc.  We are a relatively young couple (early 30s) and felt that both Thompkins and OC Flooring treated us like kids (tried to do a lot of research ahead of time, but they seemed annoyed at our questions).  Venetian came in significantly below both the other 2 vendors and we had a very positive experience with Eric both over the phone and when we met him at our model home (which both Thompkins and OC Flooring refused to do for an official quote, they wanted to measure the actual home thereby further delaying the installation of the flooring).  Thompkins in fact came in over the price of the design center and OC Flooring was about $1000 cheaper.  Both Thompkins and OC flooring quoted 4-5 days for the job completion, but Venetian promised 2 days to do all the work.

We obviously chose Venetian and I can't imagine having a more positive experience with a contractor.  We closed on Monday of this week (2 days late) and Eric was able to swap his schedule to accomodate this change since we originally scheduled work to start Monday.  He was in constant communication leading up to the install date.  Met me early to go over the details one more time.  I stayed to meet the crew and then I cleared out to give them room to work.  Total of 4 guys, one project manager and 3 workers.  They demolished tile, pulled up carpet and installed 1250 sq ft in 2 days time just as promised.  We were amazed at the efficient time use and would highly recommend Venetian Flooring to anyone.  Eric was so flexible with any requests that we had, can't imagine doing this project with anyone else.  When we asked for the flush install instead of quarter rounds, he said it would be the same price and he'd redo all the baseboards on the first floor for the same price (just asked us to provide the paint for the baseboards).  We initially didn't want to do the large storage closet under the stairs, but he convinced us by offering to do it for no additional cost. 

Attached some photos.  Feel free to ask any questions.

 

[irvinehomeowner]

@jrscgsr:

Thanks for the review.

So you decided to put wood in your kitchen area, was there any concern about moisture or dropping pots/pans on it?

 

[ZeroLot]

Thompkins in fact came in over the price of the design center and OC Flooring was about $1000 cheaper.  Both Thompkins and OC flooring quoted 4-5 days for the job completion, but Venetian promised 2 days to do all the work.

That's exactly what we experienced too.  You must have gotten that guy with the bald head at Thompkins, right?  I heard he over-charges everyone. 

By the way, your new floors look beautiful!!!  Really nice!! 

 

[aquabliss]

I love the look of hardwood floors in the kitchen, but in my last house my heart broke when 2 weeks after I installed the hardwood my dishwasher leaked and caused water damage on the brand new floor.  After getting quotes of around ~$1,000 to fix these planks, we put a mat over it and it didn't bother us (out of sight, out of mind). 

Also with kids I was always freaking out when they spilled their milk/water/etc. on the hardwood floor. 

 

[irvinehomeowner]

I love the look of hardwood floors in the kitchen, but in my last house my heart broke when 2 weeks after I installed the hardwood my dishwasher leaked and caused water damage on the brand new floor.  After getting quotes of around ~$1,000 to fix these planks, we put a mat over it and it didn't bother us (out of sight, out of mind). 

Also with kids I was always freaking out when they spilled their milk/water/etc. on the hardwood floor. 

Yep... those are my concerns too.

But it looks so nice.

 

[ZeroLot]

Also with kids I was always freaking out when they spilled their milk/water/etc. on the hardwood floor.

Freaking out over spilled milk??  Just wait until the blue sharpie art ... like little Zerolot ... TWICE!

 

[jayl23]

I love the look of hardwood floors in the kitchen, but in my last house my heart broke when 2 weeks after I installed the hardwood my dishwasher leaked and caused water damage on the brand new floor.  After getting quotes of around ~$1,000 to fix these planks, we put a mat over it and it didn't bother us (out of sight, out of mind). 

Also with kids I was always freaking out when they spilled their milk/water/etc. on the hardwood floor.

That's why I'm thinking of installing wood grain ceramic tile in the kitchen to replace the original builder grade tile floor with the extra wide grout lines.

 

[jrscgsr]

@jrscgsr:

Thanks for the review.

So you decided to put wood in your kitchen area, was there any concern about moisture or dropping pots/pans on it?

Yes, we definitely had these concerns.  We were told by all 3 companies that as long as we were quick to wipe up spills that it shouldn't be a problem with normal everyday use.  Of course large leaks from dishwashers/refrigerators will become a problem if they occur.  With the layout of our great room/kitchen, we couldn't find a good transition point to put a different material into the kitchen area and still look good to our eyes.  The original flooring had the transition point aligned with the wall of the hallway (from carpet to tile), and we thought it would look strange to go from wood->tile at this spot since the kitchen flows straight into a breakfast nook area and then to the great room.  In all the models they had the same flooring throughout the first floor, so we couldn't picture if it would look any good.  Hopefully we don't run into any problems and the future kids don't ruin the floors!!