idowalk said:
Good evening everyone,
I reserved a unit by CalIfornia Pacific in Portola Spring. Just wondering if anyone of you have experiences with their design center upgrades on the flooring and possibility an estimated pricing? If this is not allow to share publicly, could you please send the information to my email? Appreciate for your help!
My wife and I are in a similar situation as you: we're in the middle of buying our 2nd home. When we bought our 1st home 5 yrs ago, I learned a lot about a few things, one of which is wood floors.
People have their reasons for going laminate or the new WPC flooring with floating system, but I'll just talk about engineered wood full glue down (please don't even think about doing floating system with wood). I'll also talk only about wood flooring using a white oak base (which is then dyed whatever color). Martin Mania already stated the design center will charge you about $20/sq ft for engineered wood (I assume that includes the wood planks, glue, and labor) so we'll use that number for comparison.
(1) The wood. Engineered wood that most normal home owners use would have surface wear layer of 2mm, 3mm, or 4mm. Typically, if it's from a big name brand, the price per sq ft is around $3 (2mm), $5 (3mm), and $7-9 (4mm). But there's a LOT of wiggle room (meaning cheaper or more expensive) across each of the common wear layer depths with the brand names.
A brand name example I'll go straight to is Provenza, which is probably THE MOST famous brand in the US. Go to any ma-and-pa hole in the wall (like in Anaheim off State College on the "Mile of Tile") and I bet they'll have a bunch of Provenza on display. Obviously, Provenza started early and gained traction with effective marketing and advertising over the years, and, of course, you're going to pay for some of that. Look closely, and there's no doubt their New York Loft collection is very high quality and includes really good designs/colors at (on average) $7/sq ft. But you won't find the wear layer depth info on Provenza's website or any seller's website, which is extremely annoying. Strike one. So you go to a seller and look at a display sample and you find that Provenza paints all the "side walls" in black so you can't measure the wear layer yourself! Strike two. My hole-in-the-wall go-to seller (I'm a loyal customer of his) told me New York Loft is 3mm. But lots of 3mm products from other name brands sell around $5/sq ft. One such example is EP Global, which is a brand that tries to compete against Provenza's New York Loft collection (they admitted it to me) by selling similar 3mm designs/colors for ~$5 (although the EP Global line is 9/16" thick and uses a eucalyptus backing whereas Provenza is 5/8" thick and uses an 8-layer plywood backing). You most probably have never heard of EP Global, and that's because it's extremely difficult for a new brand to gain traction. And so there remains Provenza, sitting pretty, yet not much different than all the other engineered wood products manufactured in many cities across China, which is 99% of the flooring in the US.
How do they meet the Chinese manufacturers? Some have connections and travel to China, say Zhejiang province, which has a place called "Wood Floor City," but most meet these manufacturers at the annual Expo in Las Vegas. There are literally hundreds of wood flooring manufacturers in China, and the trick is to establish long-term relationships with reliable factories that produce consistently high quality planks. No doubt Provenza has an exclusive contract with a really good factory, sort of like where/how In-N-Out gets their exclusive potatoes for their fries.
But even store front sellers can buy wood flooring from the Chinese manufacturers they meet in Las Vegas. Wholesale Woodfloor Warehouse (WWW), which has 4 stores (one in Santa Ana on Edinger off the 5 fwy) sells a variety of brands, of course. But they also have their own house brand: Rockwood, which has a bunch of designs that are 7.5" wide, up to 7" semi-random lengths, 4mm wear layer at $4.99/sq ft as of today (seems to hover between $5.39 and $4.99 depending on the day)! Their Rockwood line seems to be excellent quality. They told me that not all Chinese manufacturers are the same and the trick is finding a good one. They buy directly from China and slap their own "Rockwood" label on it.
The hole-in-the-wall store fronts, unlike WWW, can't buy in bulk directly from China or advertise the product. But they have another way, I found. Some of the Chinese manufacturers have set up distribution warehouses in socal (I've recently discovered that this is how EP Global works as well) and then send their sales team out to look for vendors (store fronts). My go-to local hole-in-the-wall vendor has engineered wood displays from a Chinese manufacturer. There is a strange generic sticker and handwritten 3-digit number on the back. Each design/color has a different number. The product is 7.5" width, 7' semi-random lengths, 4 mm wear layer, and the vendor is selling them to me for less than $4.99/sq ft. The product looks almost identical to WWW's Rockwood brand, but the edge is more of a full chisel bevel edge (Rockwood has a micro bevel edge).
So now I've found 2 vendors that are selling China "direct" 4mm wear layer engineered wood for under $5/sq ft! Ultimately, it comes down to the color my wife and I like the best.
BTW, don't feel bad for the hole-in-the-wall store. They're primarily general contractors. The product displays are secondary. AND don't feel like they're inferior. You can buy Provenza anywhere. Five years ago, I called all over for pricing, and my hole-in-the-wall go-to guy gave me the lowest price. I felt Provenza was too expensive so I found EP Global as a copycat alternative. Again I called around for pricing and again my hole-in-the-wall guy gave me the best price. That's how our relationship started.
But EP Global, although its 3mm planks beat Provenza New York Loft's price point, cannot match the "direct" from China sources I recently found. The conclusion here is they all have different business models and pricing strategies. I'm just excited to be learning and figuring some of this out.
(2) Labor. This is always tricky. Have you heard of someone saying that 100% of contractor work will have some kind of screw up? Yeah, welcome to the club. Even with the contractors that new home builders use. Knock on the wood floors in the model homes around the base boards and you'll eventually find a hollow area where there wasn't enough glue. Look closely enough and you'll find poor plank selection in certain areas of a model home. Like others here have said, you can sneak in while the flooring people are working on a home in an earlier phase and get their name and number. These installers will probably charge you $1.80-$2/sq ft. Independent installers (working off the side away from their normal company) will charge $2-3/sq ft. Store fronts (general contractors) will be at least $3/sq ft.
Wherever you find the contractors (the installers), ask them how big their crew will be. Stick to 2 installers only. Do NOT allow them to bring in a team of 5 people. The reason is because they need to be working only on 1 area at a time so that you will be able to watch them closely. You need to be there for plank selection. If you have around 500-650 sq ft to be done (typical of the Cal Pac floor plans, for the 1st floor only), it should take them at least 3 days (base boards take another day). Do NOT let them talk you into doing the whole job in 1 or 2 days (that's where the 5-man team comes in!). When rushing to finish before evening, they'll be gassed, not be thinking clearly, and take shortcuts. Do NOT leave your house to pick up lunch for them. Shortcuts will be taken during that time. Always use delivery.
(3) Glue. Do NOT go cheap here. Think about it. The bulk of the money goes to the cost of the wood flooring, and you pushed your budget to get the best wood that you could afford to buy. Why would you go cheap at this point with the glue? Do NOT buy that yellow buttery Roberts glue at Home Depot. Buy the good stuff, which is more expensive. But over 500-650-1000 sq ft, it's a tiny fraction of the overall cost. So get the best: Bostik Vapor-Lock or Sika SikaBond-T21. They provide glue, moisture protection (you need that for the concrete foundation), and sound reduction (they have a ton of little black rubber balls in the glue). A general contractor told me the 2 products are exactly the same, but I haven't had the time to verify. Our current house has Vapor-Lock. These glues are very thick. Make sure the installer has worked with these glues before or at least prepare them mentally for it. They MUST use a 1/4" X 1/4" trowel. Don't be surprised if they only have a 1/8" X 1/8" trowel on hand and insist it will work. Watch the confused look on their face ("What are those black things?") as well as the fast-following bemused look on their face when their smaller trowel can't seem to push through the glue. Kindly hand them the proper trowel that you bought in ready anticipation of this sort of fiasco. Or make sure they have a 1/4" X 1/4" trowel ahead of time, say during the planning and preparation meeting with your installer. Except there probably won't be a meeting. You know why? Independent installers will invariably tell you a meeting is totally unnecessary (they don't want to spend their precious extra time), that they will go over things with you the morning of (too late, if they have to buy stuff they didn't come with prepared). So buy one for them just in case.
Do NOT listen to the contractor (the installer) tell you that the glue isn't important or all glues are good. I have talked to several general contractors (the business owners who own their own homes) and ALL OF THEM said if it was their own home, they would absolutely ONLY use Vapor-Lock or SikaBond-T21. Nothing else. Both products come in 4-gallon tubs that cost $135-150. If you're using for glue, moisture, and sound (which you should), then more glue needs to be used (hence the larger trowel). The specs say 30-35 sq ft/gal but I think for our current home, our installers were only getting about 110 sq ft for an entire 4-gal tub. Don't skimp. Remember: you only get one chance to glue. You cannot afford a failure to show up 2-5 years later.
(4) Total cost. Let's say you get Provenza New York Loft. That's $7/sq ft + $3/sq ft labor + ~$1.25/sq ft glue = $11.25/sq ft total. For our next home, I'm going with the China "direct" 4mm wear layer product from my hole-in-the-wall vendor, so my total will be ~$9/sq ft. Either way is way less than $20/sq ft from the home builder design center. Importantly, I've brought up an alternative source from which to buy wood flooring that most of the people on this forum didn't use for their own home, didn't know about, or were always afraid to go to. I think most of the stories here involved buying from a big box discount store or buying from a local independent full-service store with impressive sample displays.