We had our kitchen floor replaced.

The new floor uses Bruce prefinished oak. The contract said that they'd tear out some plywood under the old floor, else the new one would be too high..

The floor mainly looks OK, but my wife is now really ****ed off because it slopes in a way the old one didn't. Meaning: It's an eat-in kitchen. The eat-in part is in an addition. (There's no wall between the kitchen part and the eat-in part.) Now, roughly at where the addition meets the main footprint of the original house, the floor slopes downwards. A nearby cabinet makes it look like a drop of about 3/4 inch for a couple feet run, at least there.

I suppose there are two ways this could have happened:
(1) The contractor didn't execute the stated plans correctly.
(2) The plans were adhered to, but whoever put the plywood in before did something to even out the slope, and this "balance" was upset when the plywood was ripped out.

My question is: should the contractor have observed this problem and alerted us to it before putting the new flooring in? Meaning, I can see that they shouldn't have to finish the contract without additional money if there was something screwy they couldn't have known about before, but should they have alerted us to the problem and presented alternatives (like, "for $X we can try to deal with that, or you could just ignore it and we'll continue")?

The place was pretty highly rated in our local ratings magazine.

On Sunday, April 28, 2013 5:18:15 PM UTC-4, wrote:

[snip]

OK, I got out my little level. The floor is pretty level in the kitchen/original house half. It's also pretty level in addition/dinner room half. But at the transition, it slopes more than 1/2" in the course of one and a half feet.

On Apr 28, 5:18*pm, wrote:
We had our kitchen floor replaced.

The new floor uses Bruce prefinished oak. *The contract said that they'd tear out some plywood under the old floor, else the new one would be too high.

The floor mainly looks OK, but my wife is now really ****ed off because it slopes in a way the old one didn't. *Meaning: *It's an eat-in kitchen.. *The eat-in part is in an addition. *(There's no wall between the kitchen part and the eat-in part.) *Now, roughly at where the addition meets the main footprint of the original house, the floor slopes downwards. *A nearby cabinet makes it look like a drop of about 3/4 inch for a couple feet run, at least there.

I suppose there are two ways this could have happened:
(1) The contractor didn't execute the stated plans correctly.
(2) The plans were adhered to, but whoever put the plywood in before did something to even out the slope, and this "balance" was upset when the plywood was ripped out.

My question is: *should the contractor have observed this problem and alerted us to it before putting the new flooring in?


*Meaning, I can see that they shouldn't have to finish the contract
without additional money if there was something screwy they couldn't
have known about before, but should they have alerted us to the
problem and presented alternatives (like, "for $X we can try to deal
with that, or you could just ignore it and we'll continue")?


Absolutely. Any competent floor installer should have pointed out the
problem, the possible
solutions, etc. Dropping 1/2" in 1.5 ft is not acceptable.

But another question is what are the ramifications of making it one
height, eg either
the higher height or the lower height? Would that be easy to do or
do you wind up
with some other alignment or transition problem somewhere else?

My guess is that to do this right would have required some more
finesse, time, skill,
etc and the contractor just didn't give a damn.

On Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:37:35 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Sunday, April 28, 2013 5:18:15 PM UTC-4, wrote:

[snip]

OK, I got out my little level. The floor is pretty level in the kitchen/original house half. It's also pretty level in addition/dinner room half. But at the transition, it slopes more than 1/2" in the course of one and a half feet.


As a homeowner, you may not have seen that coming. A contractor is a
professional and it is his job to see problems like that. He should
have had a solution, be it at additional cost or not.

If this hardwood flooring contractor also installed baseboards after he finished installing the floor, then I don't see how the difference in floor height WOULDN'T have come to his attention. He would have noticed that for sure when installing the the baseboards at that transition. He couldn't have missed noticing that the baseboard elevation that works well on one side of the transition DOESN'T work on the other side of that transition, and would have had to figure out what to do with the baseboard in that transtion zone.

It seems to me that the best fix would have been to add an additional layer of underlayment to the area that was at the lower elevation first, and then transition to the floor at the higher elevation.

Johnsonite makes a stiff rubber material specifically for this purpose. It comes in 12 inch wide strips 4 feet long that go from effectively zero thickness on one side to 1/8 inch, 1/4 inch, 3/8 inch and 1/2 inch thickness on the other. The following image shows how the Johnsonite subfloor leveller system can be installed:



The green sheet flooring is thinner than the grey flooring, and so the tapered rubber strip is installed to transition between the two finished floor heights.

In your case, a better option would have been to add a layer of 1/2 inch underlayment to the part of the floor that was at the lower elevation, and then use these tapered strips to fill in the transition between the new underlayment and the higher elevation floor. If you use two pieces of the 0 to 3/8 inch transition and a 6 inch wide piece of 3/8 inch underlayment, you can go from 0 to 9/16 inches difference in floor height in a foot and a half wide transition. From what you're saying, that would have worked out well on your floor.

Maybe they started installing the hardwood flooring on the part of the floor at the lower elevation first, and by the time they encountered the change in floor elevation, part of the floor had already been covered in hardwood, and fixing things at that point would have meant tearing out the hardwood they'd already installed. Maybe this was a new foreman leading up this job, and he just didn't know what to do about the problem once it was staring him in the face, so he just decided to finish the job and hope you'd just learn to live with it.

Still, if this was a professional hardwood flooring contractor, then he should have been on the look out for things that could screw up the job, LIKE changes in floor elevation. After all, this wasn't his first hardwood floor installation, and he would have realized that something like that would need to be corrected BEFORE he starts installing the hardwood. So, I agree with the others that the contractor should have noticed and addressed this problem before installing the hardwood.

Have you already paid the contractor? Either way, I'd maybe bring this to the attention of the top dog at that company. Even though the job is finished, they should acknowledge that it was a mistake on their part to install the hardwood without discussing the matter with you first, and they may be willing to fix the floor at no or very little cost to you.

On Apr 29, 12:51*am, nestork wrote:
;3054572 Wrote:



...But at the transition, it slopes more than 1/2" in the course of one
and a half feet.

If this hardwood flooring contractor also installed baseboards after he
finished installing the floor, then I don't see how the difference in
floor height WOULDN'T have come to his attention. *He would have noticed
that for sure when installing the the baseboards at that transition. *He
couldn't have missed noticing that the baseboard elevation that works
well on one side of the transition DOESN'T work on the other side of
that transition, and would have had to figure out what to do with the
baseboard in that transtion zone.

It seems to me that the best fix would have been to add an additional
layer of underlayment to the area that was at the lower elevation first,
and then transition to the floor at the higher elevation.

Johnsonite makes a stiff rubber material specifically for this purpose.
It comes in 12 inch wide strips 4 feet long that go from effectively
zero thickness on one side to 1/8 inch, 1/4 inch, 3/8 inch and 1/2 inch
thickness on the other. *The following image shows how the Johnsonite
subfloor leveller system can be installed:

[image:http://www.johnsonite.com/portals/8/...orleveler.jpg]


That image looks worse than his "problem" to me. He said they
transitioned 1/2" in about 18". But I guess you could use multiple
pieces side by side of the less pitched product to make it more
gradual.







The green sheet flooring is thinner than the grey flooring, and so the
tapered rubber strip is installed to transition between the two finished
floor heights.

In your case, a better option would have been to add a layer of 1/2 inch
underlayment to the part of the floor that was at the lower elevation,
and then use these tapered strips to fill in the *transition between the
new underlayment and the higher elevation floor.

I agree, provided that adding that 1/2" to the lower part doesn't
screw
up something somewhere else, ie the bottom of a door, another
transition someplace else, etc.





*If you use two pieces
of the 0 to 3/8 inch transition and a 6 inch wide piece of 3/8 inch
underlayment, you can go from 0 to 9/16 inches difference in floor
height in a foot and a half wide transition. *From what you're saying,
that would have worked out well on your floor.

Maybe they started installing the hardwood flooring on the part of the
floor at the lower elevation first, and by the time they encountered the
change in floor elevation, part of the floor had already been covered in
hardwood, and fixing things at that point would have meant tearing out
the hardwood they'd already installed. *Maybe this was a new foreman
leading up this job, and he just didn't know what to do about the
problem once it was staring him in the face, so he just decided to
finish the job and hope you'd just learn to live with it.

Still, if this was a professional hardwood flooring contractor, then he
should have been on the look out for things that could screw up the job,
LIKE changes in floor elevation. *After all, this wasn't his first
hardwood floor installation, and he would have realized that something
like that would need to be corrected BEFORE he starts installing the
hardwood. *So, I agree with the others that the contractor should have
noticed and addressed this problem before installing the hardwood.

Have you already paid the contractor? *Either way, I'd maybe bring this
to the attention of the top dog at that company. *Even though the job is
finished, they should acknowledge that it was a mistake on their part to
install the hardwood without discussing the matter with you first, and
they may be willing to fix the floor at no or very little cost to you.

--
nestork

I'd be interested to hear how this works out. The problem now is the
"fix" isn't an easy one and involves tearing out at least 1/2 the job.

On Sunday, April 28, 2013 5:18:15 PM UTC-4, wrote:
We had our kitchen floor replaced.
[snip]

A few more details:

The old floor was also a Bruce product. We knew what was underneath in the sense that some air vent/register comes out easily, and you can look from there.

The sales guy said that between having been sanded down or something, and (IIRC) having been thinner to begin with, they'd probably take the stuff underneath the Bruce planking [? I'm not an expert in these things] out. If they didn't, the floor would be higher, and that's not the end of the world except that then e.g. this door at the side of the addition would no longer open (it was a pretty tight fit as it was).

The house is pretty old, a 1948 brick Colonial, and IMHO it's overall a good house, but having been through many owners there's a few quirky things about it. My guess is that the sheeting they did rip out was somehow placed to compensate for the transition, and when they ripped it out that "fix" was removed and not replaced.

My own guess is that as one of you said, "...to do this right would have required some more finesse, time, skill..." It was supposed to be a one-day job, and they did finish in a day. Also, none of the guys on site spoke English at all well, according to my wife who was here. Whether that correlates with being less skill is a potential flamewar that I don't think it's worth getting into, but obviously it might make communication more difficult..

My own attitude is conflicted. On the one hand, I'm not much into aesthetics, and it's not a big deal to me. All I give a $h*t about is resale implications, which I think are probably pretty minor. OTOH, we live in a world of real "information asymmetry," as economists would say, and I get pretty damn tired of people doing jobs quickly and at low cost, and without a degree of professionalism that should be reasonable to expect. Sadly, this kind of crap is hardly limited to the construction trades, but that's a rant for a different newsgroup.

On Apr 29, 9:21*am, wrote:
On Sunday, April 28, 2013 5:18:15 PM UTC-4, wrote:
We had our kitchen floor replaced.

[snip]

A few more details:

The old floor was also a Bruce product. *We knew what was underneath in the sense that some air vent/register comes out easily, and you can look from there.

The sales guy said that between having been sanded down or something, and (IIRC) having been thinner to begin with, they'd probably take the stuff underneath the Bruce planking [? *I'm not an expert in these things] out. *If they didn't, the floor would be higher, and that's not the end of the world except that then e.g. this door at the side of the addition would no longer open (it was a pretty tight fit as it was).

The house is pretty old, a 1948 brick Colonial, and IMHO it's overall a good house, but having been through many owners there's a few quirky things about it. *My guess is that the sheeting they did rip out was somehow placed to compensate for the transition, and when they ripped it out that "fix" was removed and not replaced.

My own guess is that as one of you said, "...to do this right would have required some more finesse, time, skill..." *It was supposed to be a one-day job, and they did finish in a day. *Also, none of the guys on site spoke English at all well, according to my wife who was here. *Whether that correlates with being less skill is a potential flamewar that I don't think it's worth getting into, but obviously it might make communication more difficult.

My own attitude is conflicted. *On the one hand, I'm not much into aesthetics, and it's not a big deal to me. *All I give a $h*t about is resale implications, which I think are probably pretty minor. *OTOH, we live in a world of real "information asymmetry," as economists would say, and I get pretty damn tired of people doing jobs quickly and at low cost, and without a degree of professionalism that should be reasonable to expect. *Sadly, this kind of crap is hardly limited to the construction trades, but that's a rant for a different newsgroup.


I would not accept it the way it is. If it wound up in small claims
I would think you'd have an excellent chance of prevailing. A newly
installed floor is not supposed to drop 1/2" in 18". At least not
unless
there is no reasonable way to have done it right and even then, they
clearly should have told you, discussed options, etc. Also the fact
that it did not exist before is on your side. IMO, the only way a
contractor could win this kind of case would be if they had a signed
disclaimer where you acknowledged that they told you this would
be the result. They are the professional and they are expected to
perform work to normal industry practices. This sure doesn't meet
that.

Another question is what the root cause of the difference is. Often
in cases like this with an older house, it's caused by some structural
issue. I'd want to understand why it is the way it is. Some
possibilities:

A - Something structural that was fixed at some point, but the floor
was never jacked back up. That can be OK as long as it's now sound
and you just deal with it at the sub-floor level.

B - As per above, but the structural problem was never addressed at
all.
Then it should be evaluated. It's probably OK though, if the floor
has
been the way it has been for a long time, not moving more, etc.

C - It's not structural, but just differences in sub-floor for some
reason,
like maybe one day the flooring was different in one of those areas
versus the other, like tile, etc?


What's underneath? Basement? Can you see what's going on from
below? Note that this is just something that should be determined so
that
it's dealt with properly. It in no way excuses the job they did.

On Apr 28, 4:18*pm, wrote:
We had our kitchen floor replaced.

The new floor uses Bruce prefinished oak. *The contract said that they'd tear out some plywood under the old floor, else the new one would be too high.

The floor mainly looks OK, but my wife is now really ****ed off because it slopes in a way the old one didn't. *Meaning: *It's an eat-in kitchen.. *The eat-in part is in an addition. *(There's no wall between the kitchen part and the eat-in part.) *Now, roughly at where the addition meets the main footprint of the original house, the floor slopes downwards. *A nearby cabinet makes it look like a drop of about 3/4 inch for a couple feet run, at least there.

I suppose there are two ways this could have happened:
(1) The contractor didn't execute the stated plans correctly.
(2) The plans were adhered to, but whoever put the plywood in before did something to even out the slope, and this "balance" was upset when the plywood was ripped out.

My question is: *should the contractor have observed this problem and alerted us to it before putting the new flooring in? *Meaning, I can see that they shouldn't have to finish the contract without additional money if there was something screwy they couldn't have known about before, but should they have alerted us to the problem and presented alternatives (like, "for $X we can try to deal with that, or you could just ignore it and we'll continue")?

The place was pretty highly rated in our local ratings magazine.

Where were you when the work was being done, and why didn't you check
the work before paying for it. That is just basic common sense!!!!

On Monday, April 29, 2013 10:10:13 AM UTC-4, wrote:

[snip]

I would not accept it the way it is. If it wound up in small claims
I would think you'd have an excellent chance of prevailing. A newly
installed floor is not supposed to drop 1/2" in 18". At least not
unless
there is no reasonable way to have done it right and even then, they
clearly should have told you, discussed options, etc. Also the fact
that it did not exist before is on your side. IMO, the only way a
contractor could win this kind of case would be if they had a signed
disclaimer where you acknowledged that they told you this would
be the result. They are the professional and they are expected to
perform work to normal industry practices. This sure doesn't meet
that.

OK, my wife called the guy to bitch about it. The original sales guy. I got on the phone also (conference call).

He's saying (a) they didn't know it was a problem before hand, (b) it's not clear it could have been dealt with, (c) his "technician" (his word) is very competent, blah blah blah.

What _you_ seem to say is that this work isn't up to professional standards..

That, to me, is what the key issue is. I'm not a floor guy, so I don't know what reasonable professional standards are.

I do try to be a _reasonable_ guy. I do completely, 1000% agree that if a contractor uncovers an unknown problem, then it's in most cases not reasonable for the customer to demand the contractor deal with it without any additional compensation.

But it this case, it _sounds_ like professional standards dictate that they should have brought the problem to our attention, and we should have had the option of dealing with it.

In terms of more details, we _did_ agree in advance that, by them taking out the subfloor, it would result in the overall level of the floor dropping. UNIFORMLY. And we're not contesting that.


Another question is what the root cause of the difference is. Often
in cases like this with an older house, it's caused by some structural
issue. I'd want to understand why it is the way it is. Some
possibilities:

A - Something structural that was fixed at some point, but the floor
was never jacked back up. That can be OK as long as it's now sound
and you just deal with it at the sub-floor level.

B - As per above, but the structural problem was never addressed at
all.
Then it should be evaluated. It's probably OK though, if the floor
has
been the way it has been for a long time, not moving more, etc.
C - It's not structural, but just differences in sub-floor for some
reason,
like maybe one day the flooring was different in one of those areas
versus the other, like tile, etc?

Really good points.

What's underneath? Basement? Can you see what's going on from
below? Note that this is just something that should be determined so
that
it's dealt with properly. It in no way excuses the job they did.

Sadly, I can't see. Underneath in the original footprint is my office, typing here now, and there's a "false ceiling" or whatever you call it. Underneath the addition, there's nothing. The only thing I can see w/o doing anything destructive is the vent/register, where there's not much useful info except that I can see the new Bruce flooring, and before I think I could see a level of plywood or something.

....so it really boils down to professional standards. Should they have noticed this transition, and should they have told us?

The sales guy said that this kind of thing is very common in old houses, and there's little that can be done. One of you guys make it sound like there's obvious things that can be done. (The Johnsonite link above.)

You yourself pointed out above "Would that be easy to do or do you wind up
with some other alignment or transition problem somewhere else?" Again, I'm not a floor guy, but I'm pretty reasonable, so I understand that oftentimes the world we live in is constrained, and fixing/changing things is hard or comes with a "price". But these guys didn't give us the option.

Apparently a higher-level manager called my wife back and gave her this offer: they'd fix it for the price of new materials (ie free labor), but we'd have to pay someone else to level the floor. Which sounds ridiculous: wouldn't you think "floor guys" would know how to level things out pretty reasonably before putting the final floor down? This is into "****, what's the point of paying someone else, I'll just get a book and make a few inquiries on alt.home.repair and do it myself" territory.

On Monday, April 29, 2013 11:55:05 AM UTC-4, wrote:

[snip]

Adding: suppose the problem were that the slope was completely gradual, from one end of the kitchen to one end of the dining area. My intuition would say that that would be very difficult to fix, indeed. What would you do, put down wood, and then plane it until it were level? But of course a 3/4 " drop over 15" wouldn't be a big deal.

But a transition, it's _possible_ that it would be easy to fix or considerably ameliorate. _Maybe_ one could just put sheeting down in the lower portion, and then in the transition be a bit more careful and use extra pieces to even things out.

Maybe not. But again, they just did the work and didn't think it was a big deal.

On Monday, April 29, 2013 12:51:33 AM UTC-4, nestork wrote:

"If this hardwood flooring contractor also installed baseboards after he finished installing the floor, then I don't see how the difference in floor height WOULDN'T have come to his attention. He would have noticed that for sure when installing the the baseboards at that transition."

Right. It's obvious at the transition: you can see the drop where they replaced the trim where the kitchen counter meets the floor. My wife claims she pointed it out after they were done before they level, and the tech somehow shrugged it off.

You can also see from the trim in the addition as a whole that the level dropped. We're fine with that; we discussed that beforehand.

On Apr 29, 11:02*am, wrote:
On Monday, April 29, 2013 12:51:33 AM UTC-4, nestork wrote:

"If this hardwood flooring contractor also installed baseboards after he finished installing the floor, then I don't see how the difference in floor height WOULDN'T have come to his attention. *He would have noticed that for sure when installing the the baseboards at that transition."

Right. *It's obvious at the transition: *you can see the drop where they replaced the trim where the kitchen counter meets the floor. *My wife claims she pointed it out after they were done before they level, and the tech somehow shrugged it off.

You can also see from the trim in the addition as a whole that the level dropped. *We're fine with that; we discussed that beforehand.

But why did you pay him for a crappy job??? And, wasn't anyone there
while the work was being done??

On Apr 29, 9:32*pm, "
wrote:
On Apr 29, 11:02*am, wrote:

On Monday, April 29, 2013 12:51:33 AM UTC-4, nestork wrote:

"If this hardwood flooring contractor also installed baseboards after he finished installing the floor, then I don't see how the difference in floor height WOULDN'T have come to his attention. *He would have noticed that for sure when installing the the baseboards at that transition."

Right. *It's obvious at the transition: *you can see the drop where they replaced the trim where the kitchen counter meets the floor. *My wife claims she pointed it out after they were done before they level, and the tech somehow shrugged it off.

You can also see from the trim in the addition as a whole that the level dropped. *We're fine with that; we discussed that beforehand.

But why did you pay him for a crappy job??? *And, wasn't anyone there
while the work was being done??

The big thing here that's new and of concern is that he now says:

" You can also see from the trim in the addition as a whole that the
level dropped. We're fine with that; we discussed that beforehand."

What does that mean? If there was discussion and agreement before
about the trim level dropping in the addition, how could that come up
without
it being a direct result of the floor itself also dropping? It would
seem to
me that if the trim drops, it must be because the floor drops too.....

On Apr 29, 11:55*am, wrote:
On Monday, April 29, 2013 10:10:13 AM UTC-4, wrote:

[snip]

I would not accept it the way it is. *If it wound up in small claims
I would think you'd have an excellent chance of prevailing. *A newly
installed floor is not supposed to drop 1/2" in 18". *At least not
unless
there is no reasonable way to have done it right and even then, they
clearly should have told you, discussed options, etc. *Also the fact
that it did not exist before is on your side. *IMO, the only way a
contractor could win this kind of case would be if they had a signed
disclaimer where you acknowledged that they told you this would
be the result. *They are the professional and they are expected to
perform work to normal industry practices. *This sure doesn't meet
that.

OK, my wife called the guy to bitch about it. *The original sales guy. *I got on the phone also (conference call).

He's saying (a) they didn't know it was a problem before hand,

That may be true. You say the existing floor did not have that
nasty sharp level change. In that case something was done differently
in the previous install to even it up and they removed or changed
that.
It could have been that some level changing was applied over a
much wider area, so that while the level changes, it's not abrupt,
and hence not noticeable.


(b) it's not clear it could have been dealt with,

Almost certainly a lie. The fact that the existing floor didn't have
this
problem is pretty powerful proof that you probably can get a floor
in there that doesn't have this problem

And you would think they would say "I'll be out with
the installer to see what happened, how it got that way, what can be
done etc.,
instead of already making up excuses.



(c) his "technician" (his word) is very competent, blah blah blah.

I think everyone here disagrees.





What _you_ seem to say is that this work isn't up to professional standards.

I think everyone here agrees that it's not. You can go to any of the
local
flooring stores and ask them if a 1/2+" drop in 18" is acceptable.
It's
way beyond anything that's acceptable. The only place it might be
acceptable
is if it were in say a doorway going from one room to another. Even
there
I'm not so sure. Because with that much change, do the wood joints
even look closed?

Which brings up another possible avenue to explore. Go to the Bruce
website and see what you can find as to the standards their product
is to be applied to. I would think they might have something that
says
you can't put it on an area with a sharp level change, for obvious
reasons.
Or call them up and ask.



That, to me, is what the key issue is. *I'm not a floor guy, so I don't know what reasonable professional standards are.

I would think that just life experience and general observation would
tell you that it's not acceptable.




I do try to be a _reasonable_ guy. *I do completely, 1000% agree that if a contractor uncovers an unknown problem, then it's in most cases not reasonable for the customer to demand the contractor deal with it without any additional compensation.


But it this case, it _sounds_ like professional standards dictate that they should have brought the problem to our attention, and we should have had the option of dealing with it.




In terms of more details, we _did_ agree in advance that, by them taking out the subfloor, it would result in the overall level of the floor dropping. *UNIFORMLY. *And we're not contesting that.





So, I'm confused. There is apparently a kitchen which was an older
part of the house and an eat-in section that was added on later. What
you just
said above makes it sound like they told you that the overall level of
the floor
would drop uniformly in both areas.

But in another new post, you also said:


" You can also see from the trim in the addition as a whole that the
level dropped. We're fine with that; we discussed that beforehand."

Which seems to indicate that the discussion beforehand was about
the level changing in just the eat-in section?

Which is it?






Another question is what the root cause of the difference is. *Often
in cases like this with an older house, it's caused by some structural
issue. *I'd want to understand why it is the way it is. Some
possibilities:

A - Something structural that was fixed at some point, but the floor
was never jacked back up. *That can be OK as long as it's now sound
and you just deal with it at the sub-floor level.

B - As per above, but the structural problem was never addressed at
all.
Then it should be evaluated. *It's probably OK though, if the floor
has
been the way it has been for a long time, not moving more, etc.
C - It's not structural, but just differences in sub-floor for some
reason,
like maybe one day the flooring was different in one of those areas
versus the other, like tile, etc?

Really good points.

What's underneath? *Basement? *Can you see what's going on from
below? *Note that this is just something that should be determined so
that
it's dealt with properly. *It in no way excuses the job they did.

Sadly, I can't see. *Underneath in the original footprint is my office, typing here now, and there's a "false ceiling" or whatever you call it. *Underneath the addition, there's nothing. *The only thing I can see w/o doing anything destructive is the vent/register, where there's not much useful info except that I can see the new Bruce flooring, and before I think I could see a level of plywood or something.

...so it really boils down to professional standards. *Should they have noticed this transition, and should they have told us?

The sales guy said that this kind of thing is very common in old houses, and there's little that can be done. *One of you guys make it sound like there's obvious things that can be done. *(The Johnsonite link above.)

He's a liar. It is common, but it's usually fixable.
On top of that, he's telling you what can or cannot be
done without even coming out to take a look at it? That alone
should tell you they don't give a damn. If I had a customer that was
dissatisfied over something like this, first thing I'd do is come look
at it.






You yourself pointed out above "Would that be easy to do or do you wind up
with some other alignment or transition problem somewhere else?" *Again, I'm not a floor guy, but I'm pretty reasonable, so I understand that oftentimes the world we live in is constrained, and fixing/changing things is hard or comes with a "price". *But these guys didn't give us the option.

Apparently a higher-level manager called my wife back and gave her this offer: *they'd fix it for the price of new materials (ie free labor), but we'd have to pay someone else to level the floor. *Which sounds ridiculous: *wouldn't you think "floor guys" would know how to level things out pretty reasonably before putting the final floor down? *This is into "****, what's the point of paying someone else, I'll just get a book and make a few inquiries on alt.home.repair and do it myself" territory.- Hide quoted text -


My counter offer would be:

A - Why are you making offers and conclusions without even coming here
to look at what was done?

If someone competent sees it, there is a chance they might say, "Oh,
that's
really bad. I didn't know they did that....." Or they might just
give more excuses.
I would not be afraid to push this. You have nothing to lose. And as
I said before,
if you have to, you can go to small claims court, it wouldn't cost you
but a few
bucks to get a ruling. You have everything to gain and nothing to
lose.

Things in your favor:

No way in hell is this OK to any reasonable standard of workmanship

You claim they just went ahead and did it without even discussing the
obvious
problem that would result, offering solutions, etc.

They are the experts, it's up to them to do it right, offer options,
etc.


Things in their favor:

You paid for it in full.

And maybe you did OK it, possibly without knowing what you were doing.
See my questions regarding what you now say about being told the trim
level would drop in apparently just the addition? But even if you
did, they
may not be in a very good position, because at most whatever occured
was
verbal. If someone comes to a professional and wants them to do
something that is basically outside the normal standards, half-assed,
may not work, etc, any pro should either not do it, or if they do,
then have
a disclaimer that the customer signs.

On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 9:48:37 AM UTC-4, wrote:
[snip]

So, I'm confused. There is apparently a kitchen which was an older
part of the house and an eat-in section that was added on later. What
you just
said above makes it sound like they told you that the overall level of
the floor
would drop uniformly in both areas.

But in another new post, you also said:

" You can also see from the trim in the addition as a whole that the
level dropped. We're fine with that; we discussed that beforehand."

Which seems to indicate that the discussion beforehand was about
the level changing in just the eat-in section?

Which is it?

Sorry for the confusion.

We think of the original kitchen and the addition as one space, even if it's actually the original home plus an addition. So what I meant is that we had no recollection of this kind of drop anywhere. And when I talked things over with the sales rep when he was making a quote, the idea was that they would remove subflooring from _the entire space_ (meaning, both sections).. So the level would drop in the entire space (both kitchen/old house and eating-in/addition).

Again, on the inside it appears to be one seamless space.

So, presumably they took out one layer of something or other in both places, and it mysteriously created this drop. I stress the old house vs addition part because presumably that probably has something to do with it, in terms of actual mechanics/cause.

I looked at it more carefully yesterday. One problem is that my wife, while extremely intelligent in many ways, isn't really handy. I'm not very experienced with construction, but I have very technical training and I'm able to pretty quickly grasp these kinds of issues. But my wife was the one on-site; she's also more upset about the end result.

So, anyway, my simple hypothesis _was_ that the floor dropped _more_ in the addition than in the older kitchen part, because perhaps (who knows now) whatever they took out in the kitchen was thinner than what they took out in the addition.

But I looked more closely at the evidence from the "trim lines." It looks like it dropped about the same in both sections. So that guess, that the sheet of whatever was thicker in the old part than the new, isn't supported by the available evidence. But there's a cabinet running along and parallel to the transition, which has a trim line going in the direction of the transition. _That_ trim line shows that _in that location_ the drop isn't even. Meaning, there's a definite rise/run of about 0.5" over a couple feet.

Since the "simple" hypothesis doesn't look right, it's very likely that whatever previous fix they "undid" by ripping out the subfloor was somewhat subtle. So it comes down to "how bad was it, and was it fixable within a reasonable time and budget constraint." (I think you yourself pointed out above, quite reasonably, that sometimes an obvious naive first guess on how to fix some issue would just introduce problems elsewhere. Depending.)

The answer is that we can't know without looking under the floor, and since there's not really good access from the basement, that would mean ripping the floor up. And the company refuses to do a reinstall for free.

Presumably, what _should_ have happened is that they saw this while the floor was open, and then told us about it. Maybe they could have said, "There's nothing we can do about this except at excessively large expense." Maybe they could have said, "for an extra $X we'll deal with it pretty well." But they never told us. My wife pointed it out to them (sadly, after she gave them the final payment), and they (the tech) just dismissed her.

I do thank you for the moral support (e.g., "No way in hell is this OK to any reasonable standard of workmanship..."). Since their attitude is "screw you," we probably won't do much about it (unless we look into the small claims thing and it turns out that it's as simple as you say it is...I've never done it before, though my wife is a lawyer). We've got two small kids and there's barely time to do anything.

Lessons learned, of course: (a) don't hand over the final check until a thorough inspection, (b) have the more mechanical spouse on-site while the work is being done, if possible.

Thanks for all the help and advice, much appreciated---you're a really good guy.

[snip]

On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 12:35:41 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 9:48:37 AM UTC-4, wrote:
"So what I meant is that we had no recollection of this kind of drop anywhere. And when I talked things over with the sales rep when he was making a quote, the idea was that they would remove subflooring from _the entire space_ (meaning, both sections). So the level would drop in the entire space (both kitchen/old house and eating-in/addition)."

Just for clarity: what I mean is that the floor seemed level before in the entire space. The old floor and some stuff under the floor would be removed and the new floor put in. As a result, the _expectation_ is that the floor would drop a bit everywhere, but still be fairly level. Instead, what happened is that it dropped everywhere, and is mostly level, but in one spot (say, 2 feet by five feet) there's this transition "grade".

(It's only five feet parallel to the transition between old and addition because the rest of it is covered by the cabinet.)

On Apr 30, 12:35*pm, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 9:48:37 AM UTC-4, wrote:

[snip]





So, I'm confused. *There is apparently a kitchen which was an older
part of the house and an eat-in section that was added on later. *What
you just
said above makes it sound like they told you that the overall level of
the floor
would drop uniformly in both areas.

But in another new post, you also said:

" You can also see from the trim in the addition as a whole that the
*level dropped. *We're fine with that; we discussed that beforehand.."

Which seems to indicate that the discussion beforehand was about
the level changing in just the eat-in section?

Which is it?

Sorry for the confusion.

We think of the original kitchen and the addition as one space, even if it's actually the original home plus an addition. *So what I meant is that we had no recollection of this kind of drop anywhere. *And when I talked things over with the sales rep when he was making a quote, the idea was that they would remove subflooring from _the entire space_ (meaning, both sections). *So the level would drop in the entire space (both kitchen/old house and eating-in/addition).

Again, on the inside it appears to be one seamless space.

So, presumably they took out one layer of something or other in both places, and it mysteriously created this drop. *I stress the old house vs addition part because presumably that probably has something to do with it, in terms of actual mechanics/cause.

I looked at it more carefully yesterday. *One problem is that my wife, while extremely intelligent in many ways, isn't really handy. *I'm not very experienced with construction, but I have very technical training and I'm able to pretty quickly grasp these kinds of issues. *But my wife was the one on-site; she's also more upset about the end result.

So, anyway, my simple hypothesis _was_ that the floor dropped _more_ in the addition than in the older kitchen part, because perhaps (who knows now) whatever they took out in the kitchen was thinner than what they took out in the addition.

But I looked more closely at the evidence from the "trim lines." *It looks like it dropped about the same in both sections. *So that guess, that the sheet of whatever was thicker in the old part than the new, isn't supported by the available evidence. *But there's a cabinet running along and parallel to the transition, which has a trim line going in the direction of the transition. *_That_ trim line shows that _in that location_ the drop isn't even. *Meaning, there's a definite rise/run of about 0.5" over a couple feet.

Since the "simple" hypothesis doesn't look right, it's very likely that whatever previous fix they "undid" by ripping out the subfloor was somewhat subtle. *So it comes down to "how bad was it, and was it fixable within a reasonable time and budget constraint." *(I think you yourself pointed out above, quite reasonably, that sometimes an obvious naive first guess on how to fix some issue would just introduce problems elsewhere. *Depending..)

The answer is that we can't know without looking under the floor, and since there's not really good access from the basement, that would mean ripping the floor up. *And the company refuses to do a reinstall for free.

Presumably, what _should_ have happened is that they saw this while the floor was open, and then told us about it. *Maybe they could have said, "There's nothing we can do about this except at excessively large expense." *Maybe they could have said, "for an extra $X we'll deal with it pretty well." *But they never told us. *My wife pointed it out to them (sadly, after she gave them the final payment), and they (the tech) just dismissed her.

I do thank you for the moral support (e.g., "No way in hell is this OK to any reasonable standard of workmanship..."). *Since their attitude is "screw you," we probably won't do much about it (unless we look into the small claims thing and it turns out that it's as simple as you say it is...I've never done it before, though my wife is a lawyer). *We've got two small kids and there's barely time to do anything.

Lessons learned, of course: *(a) don't hand over the final check until a thorough inspection, (b) have the more mechanical spouse on-site while the work is being done, if possible.

Thanks for all the help and advice, much appreciated---you're a really good guy.


I don't understand why anyone would just roll over and
accept this. You're not even anywhere near having to go
to small claims court and your wife is a lawyer to boot?
You want to hand over thousands and have some
shysters walk all over you? Not my method.
Put your big boy pants on and tell the contractor to get
their ass over there, look at the problem, and explain
WTF happened. Better yet, if they have a physical location,
go over there and do it face to face.

On Apr 30, 11:35*am, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 9:48:37 AM UTC-4, wrote:

[snip]





So, I'm confused. *There is apparently a kitchen which was an older
part of the house and an eat-in section that was added on later. *What
you just
said above makes it sound like they told you that the overall level of
the floor
would drop uniformly in both areas.

But in another new post, you also said:

" You can also see from the trim in the addition as a whole that the
*level dropped. *We're fine with that; we discussed that beforehand.."

Which seems to indicate that the discussion beforehand was about
the level changing in just the eat-in section?

Which is it?

Sorry for the confusion.

We think of the original kitchen and the addition as one space, even if it's actually the original home plus an addition. *So what I meant is that we had no recollection of this kind of drop anywhere. *And when I talked things over with the sales rep when he was making a quote, the idea was that they would remove subflooring from _the entire space_ (meaning, both sections). *So the level would drop in the entire space (both kitchen/old house and eating-in/addition).

Again, on the inside it appears to be one seamless space.

So, presumably they took out one layer of something or other in both places, and it mysteriously created this drop. *I stress the old house vs addition part because presumably that probably has something to do with it, in terms of actual mechanics/cause.

I looked at it more carefully yesterday. *One problem is that my wife, while extremely intelligent in many ways, isn't really handy. *I'm not very experienced with construction, but I have very technical training and I'm able to pretty quickly grasp these kinds of issues. *But my wife was the one on-site; she's also more upset about the end result.

So, anyway, my simple hypothesis _was_ that the floor dropped _more_ in the addition than in the older kitchen part, because perhaps (who knows now) whatever they took out in the kitchen was thinner than what they took out in the addition.

But I looked more closely at the evidence from the "trim lines." *It looks like it dropped about the same in both sections. *So that guess, that the sheet of whatever was thicker in the old part than the new, isn't supported by the available evidence. *But there's a cabinet running along and parallel to the transition, which has a trim line going in the direction of the transition. *_That_ trim line shows that _in that location_ the drop isn't even. *Meaning, there's a definite rise/run of about 0.5" over a couple feet.

Since the "simple" hypothesis doesn't look right, it's very likely that whatever previous fix they "undid" by ripping out the subfloor was somewhat subtle. *So it comes down to "how bad was it, and was it fixable within a reasonable time and budget constraint." *(I think you yourself pointed out above, quite reasonably, that sometimes an obvious naive first guess on how to fix some issue would just introduce problems elsewhere. *Depending..)

The answer is that we can't know without looking under the floor, and since there's not really good access from the basement, that would mean ripping the floor up. *And the company refuses to do a reinstall for free.

Presumably, what _should_ have happened is that they saw this while the floor was open, and then told us about it. *Maybe they could have said, "There's nothing we can do about this except at excessively large expense." *Maybe they could have said, "for an extra $X we'll deal with it pretty well." *But they never told us. *My wife pointed it out to them (sadly, after she gave them the final payment), and they (the tech) just dismissed her.

I do thank you for the moral support (e.g., "No way in hell is this OK to any reasonable standard of workmanship..."). *Since their attitude is "screw you," we probably won't do much about it (unless we look into the small claims thing and it turns out that it's as simple as you say it is...I've never done it before, though my wife is a lawyer). *We've got two small kids and there's barely time to do anything.

Lessons learned, of course: *(a) don't hand over the final check until a thorough inspection, (b) have the more mechanical spouse on-site while the work is being done, if possible.

Thanks for all the help and advice, much appreciated---you're a really good guy.

[snip]- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Sounds like maybe they didn't remove all the subflooring. It is not
more than 4th grade level to use a 4' level and tell when floors are
horizontal and not tilted.

On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 10:37:09 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Sounds like maybe they didn't remove all the subflooring. It is not
more than 4th grade level to use a 4' level and tell when floors are
horizontal and not tilted.

You'd think so, right?

Here's a direct, copied-and-pasted quote from an email I just got from the office manager: "However, we do not do floor leveling, which seems to be the underlying issue. If you take care of the leveling issue, we will return to your home to re-install the hardwood."

Am I wrong on this, or is it bizarre that a floor installation company "doesn't do floor leveling"?

On May 1, 11:35*am, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 10:37:09 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Sounds like maybe they didn't remove all the subflooring. *It is not
more than 4th grade level to use a 4' level and tell when floors are
horizontal and not tilted.

You'd think so, right?

Here's a direct, copied-and-pasted quote from an email I just got from the office manager: *"However, we do not do floor leveling, which seems to be the underlying issue. If you take care of the leveling issue, we will return to your home to re-install the hardwood."

Am I wrong on this, or is it bizarre that a floor installation company "doesn't do floor leveling"?

I would save that email for court.

It's like taking a car to a paint shop. You pay them $3000
to paint the car. After it looks like crap, they tell you:

"We don't do rust repair, body work, etc."

The fact that they don't is fine. The fact that they
represent themselves as paint pros and just paint
over rust, without even discussing it with you, is not.

On Sunday, April 28, 2013 5:18:15 PM UTC-4, wrote:
[snip]

OK, here's the outcome:

We had a long phone call with the salesman/estimator complaining about this.. He shifted his rationale many times, at one point lying and saying that we discussed the uneveness of the floor beforehand. (Can't be true since the floor wasn't uneven before they did their work.)

SWMBO got really, really ****ed and had some email correspondence with someone else and then sent a very carefully worded letter complaining about the salesman's behavior, as well as the quality of the work.

For some strange reason, they decided to refund us the entire cost. I didn't think that was quite fair, so we asked for everything but materials. So we got $1400 back out of $2400.

replying to woger151, mapwest wrote:
What city was this in. I am having contractor issues and am curious if it is
the same one.

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