Are you employeed, or are you a business owner yourself??

Most people that are employees, never understand a business is not in business, to make a weekly paycheck. You won't be in business for very long with that business plan!!!! There has to be a profit for the business to stay in business, after all wages and overhead are paid. Don't get the owners wages, confused with the businesses profit, either.

$8 a foot is not out of line for prep, install, sand, stain and finish. I have charged much higher on some jobs, and much lower on others.

I'm neither... I am a stay at home mother in the midst of a renovation.

The floor installer is self employed working on his own. If his gross charges are $8000 for a week of work, his gross pay is $400,000. All of the material costs are being covered by the contractor... the floor installer is supplying the labor only.

I stand by my original thought, that this is exorbitant for a week's worth of work. Yes, he has to pay gas to get to a the job and needs to maintain his sander, but how is this different than the expenses my husband incurs as a banker (commuting into Boston. Paying $2.50 for the Tobin Bridge and $25/day for parking along with gas to get in and out of the city).

Calling $8/sq.ft. sounds more palatible for sure, but it is still $8000 for a week's work which seems like a giant rip off.

I kinda have to agree with floorguy, as well as to add a question about the complexity of the project. If it is a square room with very few cut and angle to deal with the costs show be relatively less rather than a flooring job that has to deal with curved wall and many corners. Also dealing with random widths of flooring you would expect longer time to lay out the boards and more waste.

mamadadapaige,
I feel your pain :( Prices, regardless if they are "fair" or not, are just plain high!!! I have had to change my choices on several things for our build only because the prices are so beyond what I can live with. That said, I have come to the realization that these prices are not necessarily wrong, they are just too high for me!! There should be a huge selection of white oak that you could "arrive" at something you could afford AND like. I know it does not seem right to have to "settle" or not have what you really, really, want but so much of this "process" is compromise and to be able to stay within a budget!
HTH

My husband runs his own business (he's a chiropractor). His charges go to so much more than just wages.

Here's just a few of them:
Equipment
Liability insurance
Health insurance
Retirement funds
Down time (times with no patients, sick time, etc.)
Time to handle paperwork associated with a business
Business licenses
Advertising
Consult time

The list goes on and on.

Don't forget contractors are required to pay into social security for their employees. Also, a lot of small contractors like cash and will negotiate based on that. They don't their wages garnished by the government every paycheck like most of us and they have to come up with sometimes huge payments of estimated taxes during the year. Having someone come in and do it right is expensive. The alternative is to do what I do most of the time. Research the heck out of a project, determine if you can do all of it or some of it yourself, and determine if doing so is not "out of your league". Be ready to compromise on what you want. For example: I just got select and better unfinished red oak for $2.08/square foot from a reputable source. I bought a pneumatic flooring nailer for $140 from ebay, which I will resell when I am done. I bought T&G plywood subfloor and moisture barrier. I'll spend another $500 or so on high end finishing products and sander rental, and put in a lot of work, but end up with a new kitchen floor for a bit over $2000. Now I could have found a bargain on prefinished floor and spent a little more, but saved a lot of the skilled level labor, or I could have done my own bargain hunting on materials, making the same compromises, and paid a pro for the labor which would have been the major part of my expense because of all the factors mentioned above by others, but I take some certain amount of pride in doing things myself if I feel confident I can do them correctly. I got off on a tangent, but bottom line is it doesn't sound as if anyone is trying to stick it to you on price. For exampleMy mother just paid $15K for a prefinished tigerwood floor in her kitchen/dining/foyer.

Okay, I stand corrected. I at least feel better that the overwhelming feeling is that I am not being taken to the cleaners which is in essense the purpose of my posting - to know one way or the other...

I asked the contractors for a little more information... apparently the guy is meticulous and won't compromise his work or quality so it will probably take longer than the estimate I was given.

All of this means we will not be able to go with a random width floor.

I just wish I knew ahead of time a general price range of installation as I wouldn't have spent probably 25 hours searching high and low for the floor I wanted at the price I thought I could afford. The installation is costing far more than the materials... that was unexpected, but as I have learned probably shouldn't have been if I were better informed.

My apologies to you flooring guys who are working hard to make your living doing a job that I personally would not be able to DIY.

Just FYI - in building almost always the labor is a significant portion of overall cost vs just the materials. It isn't usually the case for flooring for pre-finished, but for site finished, can definitely be that way.

This generally holds true for many other things in construction like roofing, trimwork, framing, masonry, paint, etc, etc

In the Boston area, there is no better wood floor craftsman then Howard Brickman, or his son.

Definitely go with an installer that does high quality work. Find one that is certified and has good references. A hardwood floor will last the life of the home and it needs to be done right the first time.

Probably the most overlooked aspect of installing any hard surface floor is the often tedious job of leveling the subfloor. Even though this is time consuming work required in almost all homes, the subject is glossed over in the DIY shows and install literature. It was the most difficult part of my DIY install.

Flooring suppliers- your installer will likely have wood suppliers they have experience with and trust. They also have the option of marking up the price they pay by whatever they like. That's just the way it works. For example, our auto mechanic charged us $20 for new lug nuts that retail online for $8. The Graf Brothers random width (3",4",5", 7") red oak #1 common flooring I purchased directly was not as high in quality as I would have liked. There were too many boards high/low on width and too many high on moisture content. It made my install a PAIN having to work around this. If I did it over again, I would spend more (I paid $3.30/sf delivered) and go with a supplier that offered higher milling standards and better moisture control.

Saving money- white oak and black walnut are the hot American hardwoods right now. The price of both has gone up significantly in the last few years. Red oak, on the other hand, has not been popular and the price has dropped significantly. Stained, red oak and white oak are almost identical. Red oak tends to have slightly more color variability in the natural form and also more variability in growth rates (ring spacing). It's not quite as hard as white oak, but hard enough for any active family.

Finishes- your installer will recommend a finish for the wear your floor will encounter. I went with a tung/oil resin mixture, but this has a MAJOR disadvantage of slow dry time and smell. The commercial water-based finishes are probably the best choice for most people.

A random width hardwood floor is unique looking and very beautiful. We are still happy with ours after 2 1/2 years:

Here is a link that might be useful: Random width R&Q red oak floor

Very nice!

Hi,
Well I have finally figured out what to do... I asked the sales rep from Carlisle for some help. He gave me the name of an installer that has put in many many Carlisle floors over the years and is very experiences working with random width floor installation. I spoke to him on the phone and felt VERY comfortable going with him and am trusting that Carlisle wouldn't recommend him if he weren't very good.

He has a hole in his schedule and Carlisle will expedite the wood to me so the floors will go down in about 3 weeks time!

His price for installation, soup to nuts, staining, 2 coats of tung oil and one coat of poly is $6500. He also didn't want matched ends on the floors that the other installer wanted so that saves me 50 cents per square foot. so my total price went from $17,900 to $15,800 which was enough for me to convince my husband to go for the random width floor.

Thank you all for your advice and council and my apologies if I offended anyone by thinking the $8K was much too high. I know it isn't putting in HW floors and I know there is a HUGE difference between a job well done and one done on the cheap.

thanks. I couldn't agree more that it is worth doing this right the first time and making decisions that avoid regret down the road. i feel really good about how it is working out. We are coming in at $4700 over our allowance but I think it will end up being a stunning floor and am very excited to see how it ends up turning out.

PS: I did call Howard Brickman but didn't hear back from him. I was impressed with his website... probably we wouldn't have been able to afford him either, but I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained.

No offense, but you are being charged what seems like a very high price for your flooring. I just received beautiful samples of red oak, cherry and southern heartpine plank flooring from country plank.com and the costs are very fair. It is $4.15 per square foot for FINISHED 4" variable width red oak (same for white oak) and $4.59 for the cherry (if you want to finish it yourself or have it finished the prices are about $1.25 per square foot less). Delivery North of Boston (where I also live) is $300. I can't speak to the cost of installation but prior to settling on the plank flooring I was quoted between $7-9 TOTAL per square foot for standard white oak flooring (materials, finish & installation) so what you are being charged seems exorbitant to me.

People that shop on the lowest price they can possibly find, very seldom have their expectaions met.

The bitterness of a cheaply done job, will last longer then the sweetness of the lowest price.

Good is never cheap, and cheap is never good.

You get what you pay for.

If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

I could go on and on.

That may be true, but the prices I got for installing hardwood floors didn't exceed $10 per square foot (for materials and labor -- white/red oak) and that was from a wide variety of contractors (at least 7 estimates). After that number of quotes I assumed that was the prevailing market price and not that I was going for the cheapest (i.e. poor quality by your estimation). However, to be fair, this estimate was included as part of a greater remodeling effort (kitchen) where the subfloor was going to be ripped out and fixed at additional cost (as part of our gut renovation) so that may account for the pricing. Also, many sources I consulted said that install alone (not including materials or finishing) should run $3-5 per square foot which is why the $9 figure seemed so out of line to me.

I think you can do a lot better on the price of the quartersawn oak. I am using 3" wide rift and quartered white oak and it's only $3.70 (unfinished). they sell long lengths for a bit more.

Here is a link that might be useful: hurst hardwoods

I think you can do a lot better on the price of the quartersawn oak. I am using 3" wide rift and quartered white oak and it's only $3.70 (unfinished). they sell long lengths for a bit more.

Here is a link that might be useful: hurst hardwoods

This conversation has been very helpful. I feel like 75% of my research is already done (and in 3 minutes of reading). Thank you!