Reclaimed Wood is the Green Choice

The use of reclaimed wood floors has become very common in new homes and renovation projects alike. Most homeowners prefer to use wood flooring reclaimed from old buildings before they are demolished. The eco-friendly option has become quite fashionable and here are a few advantages that you too can enjoy by using reclaimed wood flooring.

 
  

1. Well aged wood floors require less chemical treatment
The biggest advantage of wooden flooring that has been reclaimed from old buildings is that it is properly aged. The exposure to the air and humidity dries the wood out which means that it wouldn’t shrink or warp upon use and don’t need chemical stains and treatment to look good.

2. Reclaimed wood floors save new trees
When you use wood floors reclaimed from another site, you actively prevent new trees from being felled to create new wood floors. If you want your new home to be as eco-friendly as it can be without giving up the hominess that only wood flooring can provide, reclaimed floors would be your best bet.

3. More cost effective than fresh wood floors
Wood floor that is reclaimed from an old building is often much, much cheaper than flooring that is made from freshly cut trees.

4. Easier to maintain than new wood
Old wooden floors get the kind of exposure that wood needs to age properly. A wooden floor that has been in use before is aged and weathered just the right amount which means that it doesn’t need to be treated and taken care of as much as a new wood floor. You can simply stain these floors or leave them bare to make them even more low maintenance.
5. Add natural beauty to a room

Unstained and untreated old wood floors lend a certain beauty to a room that cannot be had with the use of a fresh wood flooring. If you are looking to create a retro or vintage themed room, reclaimed wood flooring could work wonders.

Original Article

Eco Friendly Flooring

If you need to replace your carpets or floors, choose materials that are safe for your health and the planet.

EPA studies have shown that indoor pollutant levels can be two to five times higher than they are outside. To find the source of many of these pollutants, just glance down. Installation of new carpet and flooring can fill the air with hundreds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including known and suspected carcinogens like formaldehyde and benzene. It can take years for these substances to dissipate. In addition, carpets are often treated with toxic chemicals for mothproofing or to repel soil and moisture. Carpeting is also notorious for trapping toxic lawn chemicals, VOCs, and allergens tracked in from outside.

There are several sustainable flooring options that can...

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Eco-Friendly Flooring

TOPCU Tile and Stone at California's Best Flooring Company!

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Many home owners have been remodeling their homes lately, and wood flooring and carpeting seem to be the two biggest factors they are considering as a home improvement. Homeowners should not install seconds or some lesser quality flooring products in home. Due to increasing home values, residents should make sure they only select  #1 grade flooring material and carpeting for quality and long product life.   With California’s Best Flooring Company, homeowners get the best flooring at the best possible price! 

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Good day, all!

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California's Best Flooring Company
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How to Get a Flooring Estimate Without Getting Ripped Off

How to Get A Proper Flooring Estimate and Discount Without Getting Ripped Off

Whenever we do a home improvement, we first find a contractor or company who is going to do the work and ask them to give us a written estimate for the total cost of the work to be done.  Most contractors will first present the customer with a lump sum price.  Do not accept this and do not ask for a discount on a lump sum price. Each estimate is comprised of three or four items; the costs of labor, the cost of materials, taxes, and the costs of the overhead and profit of the contractor.  When you ask for a discount on a lump sum price one cannot be sure where the discount is coming from.  As a home owner you don't want the discount to come from the quality of the materials. Secondly you don't want the contractor to discount the labor by hiring less than perfect craftsmen.  You want the discount to come from the contractor's profit margin. A fair profit for the skill and service of a contractor is 15-20% on each job or project.  However, I am seeing many companies making a killing off uneducated consumers on an average of 35-60% with terrible craftsmanship or materials.

Your First 5-10% Discount

The best way to avoid this is as follows:  first, ask the contractor to break the estimate down into its 3 or 4 parts.  (labor, materials, Taxes and OP: Overhead and Profit).  Remember some contractors will apply a small profit margin on the material and a larger margin on labor. In a written contract specify that the contractor use only craftsmen that have a minimum of 5 years hands on experience in doing your particular desired task and make sure that if the job is subcontracted out by the company you’re paying that they warranty the work of the subcontractor they are using.  For example, Home Depot hires out all of its contracted work yet warranties the work itself.  You don’t want to come into a situation when someone says, “Oh that’s an improper installation issue. I just sell the materials and you’ll have to go find the installers yourself”.

Get a labor square foot, per-unit installation price if applicable. Locking this in prevents the contractor from charging more later on in a project should you decide you want to do more work.  Then ask the contractor to break down the exact materials to be used by name, brand, and specifications for the job and offer to go to the supplier and pay for the materials yourself.  All contractors mark up materials. If you pay for the materials and pay the supplier to deliver the materials, you avoid the mark up and you make sure you are getting the right quality materials for the job (i.e. nothing gets switched out en route to your house).  Plus, you maintain control of your money and this avoids the “Half-down up-front, never see you again situation”.

It also helps you from being over charged. For example: The contractor says you need 1,000 square feet of wood flooring and you buy 1,000 square feet from the supplier. You have it delivered and you know how many boxes equal 1,000 SF since you have the invoice. When the job is finished and you have too many left over boxes then you were mislead as to the square footage of the project.  If you have the labor rate separated in your contract at a per square foot price then you can say, “Hey I have 200 square feet left over of material and you charged me $2.50 a square foot for labor to install it I am subtracting 200 x $2.50 = $500.00 off the final balance of the job.  I always write on my contracts exactly how many boxes are going to come to the house.  Watch the installers toward the end of the job; They will start moving extra material to their trucks to avoid you from seeing this overcharge as well since they get a paid cut for this extra ghost square footage as well.  Remember all material is yours if it comes to your home! Count all the boxes. If the contractor gives you any problems about not paying once he or she is caught, then just remember this phrase, “Theft of Services”.  If you pay a contractor for work that they do not perform then you can file a complaint with the local district attorney’s office for theft of services.  Don’t be afraid to use this term if the contractor tries to collect on work they didn’t do or add square footage that never existed.

Note: The best way to find a supplier is to contact a products manufacturer.  They will then give you a list of certified distributors/suppliers of their product.  All contracts then go to these distributors to get the material they use in your home.  Some suppliers will not accept payment from the public but many will.  It’s worth the try of at least a phone call to see how much they charge. It is safe to say the contractor will always mark materials up 10-30%.  So if you have to use a contractor to procure the materials no matter what get a 5% discount here.

Your Next 5-10% Discount

Now that you have specified and control the materials to be used for the job, the next discount will come from the labor line-item.  Most labor is marked up 15-25%. Wow, I know right? Ask for a 20% discount on this line items total.  Settle for 5-10%.  Never settle for no discount as the meat of all profit for the contractor or sales rep commission is hidden here.

Your Next 5% Discount

Part three of the estimate should be a tax line item.  Taxes should only be calculated on the material costs only.  The reason contractors give you a lump sum bid is so they can tax the whole project.  It is illegal to tax a home owner for labor.  There is no sales tax on labor!!!! Contractors and retailers don’t pay taxes on labor in a contract to the state or government and neither should you. By making the contractor or salesman separate taxes you will get a discount.  Salesmen and contractors tax the whole project and keep the added tax they charge you on labor as straight profit.  Or they give you a discount of, say, 5% to get you to sign the contract.  What they don’t tell you is they over charged you tax in the first place.  So you will get an average of 5% discount in taxes if you make the contractor break out the bid and only tax the materials per law.  Some flooring “empires” will not break out their bid since this exposes this trick they use in over charging their customers. Also note: when you pay for the materials you know what the taxes are and you control this number. If you buy the materials, taxes are no longer a factor for the contractor to charge you.

Overhead should be 5-10% of the overall total labor price. Not the materials! As you went through the trouble of handling the payment and delivery of the materials this is no longer a factor for the contractor’s profit or overhead factors.  Anything higher than 5-10% is a red flag the company is not efficient and you should avoid that company. Companies that say they need anything above 10% for overhead will not be in business long which means how are you going to get a warranty a year from now? Tell this to the salesman and see what excuses they make up not to mention the look on their face when they don’t have an answer as they just got caught over charging you.

Breaking Out The Bid In Its Basic Elements:

Labor/Installation: $2.50 a Square Foot x 1,000 SF = $ 2,500.00

Materials: 1,000 SF x 5% waste add 50 SF =1,050 x $2.99 per SF= $3,139.50

Tax: Materials: $3,139.50 x .085%= $266.86

O&P: Usually buried partly in the materials and mainly in the Labor section already so be wary of this line item.

Total Cost of Project: $5,906.36.

If the contractor does not want to give you a breakdown as described above walk away! When contractors file their taxes the state and federal government asks for this breakdown and they can't say no, so why shouldn't you get this same information? It is your home and you're the boss since you are paying.

If you get a break down of the actual square footage of a room, as in a flooring bid, the labor price should be x times the exact room square footage amount.  Most salesmen in a lump sum bid will add a 5-to 10% waste factor to a bid and thus mark up the labor as well.  There is no waste factor in labor for a room size.  A room size is what it is. It is a fixed number.  The only waste factor is in the materials that are used not labor and if your room is a perfect square the waste factor for the materials should only be room size, times 5%, times the price per square foot of the material.

When you don't get a bid that is broken out then you set yourself up for overpaying for a job from the start.  When you ask for a discount from a bid that's a lump sum price beware the discount may be tax that you shouldn't have paid anyways, a discount from added labor that was above and beyond the actual square footage anyways, or even if you get a discount you may then have the quality of the material or craftsman's switched out on you.  This is your project take time to control the different aspects of it.  This will also help to avoid cost over runs and weed out any contractors that are rip offs as unprofessional contractors want to only deal with people they can get easy money from. Professional contractors are used to abiding by these terms and conditions and will not shy away from your requests for a break down as they have nothing to hide and plan on staying in business.

Words Used to Manipulate the Flooring Consumer

Words That Are Used To Manipulate Us When We Engage In A Home Improvement Purchase

The English language is an integral part of shopping and everyday commerce.  Businesses know and understand this well.  In fact there are even books written for words that can sell to you, the customer.  We may not pay attention to these words and you may be tricked by them into making a purchase that isn’t as good as you were led to believe.  So in the war of words, here is a quick manual for consumers when it comes to shopping for home improvement products.  Since I am a flooring expert I will correlate many words with the flooring industry, but I am sure you have seen these words and phrases used in other industries. 

The total number of words that are used in the market place far surpass what I will cover in this article, but the true purpose of the article is to get you to pay attention to the words that are used against you. 

Words that are used to mislead you 

Surplus: Something that remains above what is used or needed. 

Overstock:  to stock to excess. 

How many of you have seen signs for flooring companies or the company itself uses the word surplus or overstock in their name to sell their products. There is no such thing as surplus or overstock flooring.  With inventory controls and the high costs of making a mistake in ordering materials, who makes a big enough mistake where a store has thousands of square feet of flooring that is surplus? Every builder and home owner I know measure every square foot to the inch, so I know the surplus isn’t coming from them. When the US military says they have 10,000 boots as surplus I believe it.  But not when a flooring store uses it to promote the idea of discounts or cheaper pricing. How can a flooring company that buys containers of flooring direct from China or from their distributor knowing what they are buying (and in abundance) label their product a surplus or overstock? Where’s the surplus coming from? 

Seconds is a different story. Seconds in the flooring industry means there is something wrong with the flooring in so much that the manufacturer does not want to put their name on it.  Be it a color variation, twisted or not so straight boards, delamination and finish problems, the formaldehyde emittance is too high for industry standards (the glues to bond most plywood engineered floors emit this in low levels), the color changes color in the sun after time and so on and so on.  If you ask the sales rep why it is seconds the majority of the time they will say it’s a color variation because they really don’t know themselves. I wouldn’t believe it. For the headaches and not really knowing why something is seconds I would run away from seconds unless you’re a flooring expert. You will spend more money using flooring that is seconds than just buying the factory approved product.  I have known many contractors who have had to buy 150% or more of material just to finish one area as they had to discard material that didn’t lay straight. 

Factory Direct: Direct: proceeding in a straight line or by the shortest course. 

Factory Store: A store that is owned & run by the manufacturer. 

Distributor: A wholesaler who has exclusive rights to market, within a given territory, the goods of a manufacturer or company. 

Dealer: a person who buys and sells articles without altering their condition; trader or merchant. 

These are used all the time in the flooring industry.  Used and abused.  There are only a small handful of distributors that get their product factory direct compared to the number of stores that say they are selling to you factory direct.  The usual chain of events in a factory direct purchase should be: Manufacturer: Approved Regional Distributor: Flooring Store.  Only three Mark ups.  This is how I have positioned my company; http://www.californiasbestflooringcompany.com. 

When this phrase is abused you get: Manufacturer: Approved Regional Distributor: Another Distributor: Flooring Company: Smaller Flooring Store, Dealer, Builders: Fully five Mark ups!  Not every company or distributor can get every flooring product, factory direct. If they say then can then I would not believe it.  Manufacturers preselect who they want to distribute their product in a selected region.  That distributor then picks reputable companies in which to sell their represented manufacturer’s goods.  It’s a form of quality control.  So by the time your builder or installer tells you they can get wood flooring factory direct I’d need some proof. 

To follow the chain of anything factory direct you go to the manufacturer’s website and look for approved distributors.  Then you call the distributor in your area and ask them what flooring store offers the product you are looking for.  Some distributors are the flooring store thus being a one- two mark up. This is the most cost effective way. Work from the source out not start at the store and work backwards.  So the next time a flooring company or someone else claims to be a distributor, misleading you the consumer into thinking you’re getting a product direct form the source, verify this, contact the manufacturer. 

Outlet: a store, merchant, or agency selling the goods of a particular wholesaler or manufacturer. 

Wholesale: the sale of goods in quantity, as to retailers. 

As far as I know there is no such thing as a flooring outlet store in the true meaning of what an outlet is.  Clothing stores have outlets where the factory makes mistakes and the outlets then offer the products at a discount. For example Polo clothing and Coach Hand Bags have outlet stores that just offer their products. I don’t know of one factory-represented flooring outlet store; anywhere in California.  The next time someone claims to be an outlet then ask them why they carry more than one brand and which factory or manufacturer do they represent.  I can say with certainty that if you call a flooring manufacturer and ask them where their flooring outlet is in California. They are going think you are crazy; they may even laugh.  They are going to probably ask you if you mean distributor but an outlet and distributor are two different things. Bottom line is there are no factory direct flooring outlets in California. 

The word Wholesale is ridiculously over used.  Forget the word all together.  Flooring is sold per job pack, per pallet price, then container price, and then multiple container pricing.  Job Pack is usually under 800-1,000SF, Pallets are 1,000- 2,500SF depending on the material, etc. Containers are usually 9 or more pallets, and multiple containers reach up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  As a consumer, the best price you can get, call it wholesale, discount, whatever it is, is pallet pricing.  This is your commando word to fight the enemy.  You want pallet pricing on everything you can get since there’s no way you’re ever going to need a container of flooring with 20,300SF.  This is the term we use and so should you.  I don’t go to my supplier and say, “Can I get some wholesale tile.” I ask what’s the pallet price and how much do I have to buy to get it for xyz. 

Sale and Discount Teasers 

Save up to XX% Off!, YY% Discount!, Price Break! Price Blowout! Prices Slashed, One Day Sale, One Day Only, Giant Closeout Sale, Everything must go, We Must Move Our Inventory, Buy more save more, Huge Discounts, Buy One Get One Free, Store Wide Clearance, Liquidations:

In sales these are called teasers.  Whenever I see up to 50% off I think 50% off of what? One million dollars? Prices change for suppliers and costs fluctuate in the market. Yes, price increases get pasted on the public but not as extremely as some companies would make it.  I never really have sales as my flooring company offers just low pricing year round.  Here is the scenario and you tell me where the huge discount comes from:  The flooring manufacturer has a price that they set and sell to the distributors.  The distributors then mark it up with a little wiggle room to only those who buy bulk.  At this point this is a two markup scenario. If a flooring company is sharp, they find a way to be in this position.  If you as a consumer are dealing with, let’s say three companies that are in the three markup situation then how can one company offer a huge discount over everyone else when everyone buys form the same distributor in that area? They can offer a huge discount because they normally are over-charging customers to begin with.  This is why they can offer 50% off and still be profitable.  Discount only really truly comes into play in flooring when a product line is discontinued and the manufacturer is going to discontinue that product.  Even then you have to ask yourself why would they discontinue a profitable item. Is there something wrong with it? 

Going out of business sale: 

If a company is truly going out of business, wouldn’t you want a warranty on a product that you’re spending thousands of dollars on?  Some would say, “Oh well, in flooring you get it from the manufacturer for the product”. True, but trust me it helps when the person you buy the product from can help you get your warranty.  A flooring company that sells thousands and thousands of dollars of a manufacturers product can have some pull in helping you, the consumer, get your warranty if you come into problems.

If you’re making a large purchase, check to make sure the company is not in bankruptcy. (Store Wide Clearance=red flag)  Companies don’t have to disclose to the consumer they are in bankruptcy as it is public information and it is up to the consumer to do their due diligence.  If you do business with a company in bankruptcy or are buying from a store wide clearance sale, get your product on the spot--don’t wait for delivery or you may find your check cashed and store locked the next day.  Depending on where you live and the company is head quartered the bankruptcy court may vary.

I know this has nothing to do with home improvements but it’s my all time favorite.  Ever see the signs at pawn shops and other places that say, “We buy scrap gold.”  There’s no such thing as gold that is scrap; gold is gold.  The word scrap is meant to devalue the gold you are trying to sell so you get less than fair market value.  When they melt it down and reform it is it marked, “Previously Gold Scraps”. No it’s not! Try going to these places and asking them if you can buy scrap gold one oz bars. Somehow I don’t think they will give you a discount.

The financial and banking industries are examples of where you have to have a license or be what you say you are or you risk fines and jail time. The flooring industry in California and many other states do not have this federal regulation of checks and balances over the use of words to protect consumers. 

Remember: it’s ok to let words pique your interest in a product or service, but don’t let it sway you away from the most important aspect at hand: the final price and value of what you need or want. Every industry has its phases and words and they have a purpose.  Just verify the company you are dealing with uses the words to convey their correct position and meaning in the marketplace. 

Please visit www.californiasbestflooringcompany.com for all your flooring needs!