Flooring

Before you buy a single box of flooring, pull up a corner of the carpet in a closet and look at what is underneath. If the house went up in Manatee or Sarasota County between the 1950s and the early 1970s there is a very good chance the slab was finished in poured terrazzo, and that thousands of them were carpeted or tiled straight over in the 1980s. Ground and polished, that original terrazzo is a better floor than almost anything you can buy new, and it is already paid for. We check for it before we quote anything else, because we would rather restore a floor than sell you one.

Where new flooring is the answer, the slab decides the material. Everything here sits on grade, and a concrete slab carries moisture up through it even when the surface reads bone dry. That rules out a lot of what looks good in a showroom. Porcelain tile and quality luxury vinyl plank over the correct underlayment are the two that hold up on this coast, and solid hardwood laid directly on a slab is a call we will talk you out of.

Preparation is where a floor is won or lost. Older block homes settle unevenly and old adhesive never comes up as easily as anyone hopes. Every floor we lay goes over a slab that has been ground flat, moisture tested and properly prepared, because plank over a slab that is out of level will telegraph every joint within a year no matter how good the product was. We also do a lot of flooring replacement in homes that took water, and in those the moisture reading and what is left of the baseboard and the bottom of the drywall matter more than the flooring choice does.