You need to give the floor person the proper amount of time to do the job. It sounds like he's a day behind on what was already an impossible schedule. I would suggest you tell your floor guy that you're putting off the move until he's done with the floor and ask him, without pressure, exactly how much time he needs to do the job right and to warrant the finished product. Some contractors will take shortcuts just to please a customer without regard to the negative effects. I can't speak to how long your wood should be acclimated since I may live where the climate is different, but we allow 2 WEEKS to pass between the time we lay the floor and start sanding. In instances where we are asked to shortcut the recommended acclimation process, I advise my customers of what the pitfalls might be and if necessary, relieve myself of the liability if something goes wrong. To put your stress in perspective, consider the inconvenience you'll go through if the floor job is rushed, then goes bad, either right away or after you've moved in.

We used masonite sheets over the rosin paper which really helped the tromping/scratching factor. And honestly, I'd rather take my chances with the cabinet installers (who are generally carpenters) hurting the floor, rather than the flooring installers (who are generally not carpenters) hurting the cabinets. :-) It's also a lot more work to cut around cabinetry that's already installed, so chances are the savings in square flooring footage will get totally eaten up with the extra labor time, anyways. And unless they are really skilled, you will wind up needing shoe molding to hide the small gaps between floorboards and cabs/toekicks.

/sigh... This is one of the problems with internet advice so be careful that you don't cost yourself a fortune following the advice of people who don't fully understand your situation and are just making a lot of assumptions. First, let's talk about acclimation... The required acclimation time for flooring is zero minutes. It would be better to think of it as acclimation when needed (though usually needed). If moisture readings were taken when delivered and were at the baseline moisture content for your geographical region, then they don't need to acclimate. That is rarely the case, but it does happen. In my area there is a flooring retailer with an acclimation room which helps get flooring to the baseline for our area. So the “delivery guy took a reading of the wood and the floor where they were stacked and said they were good,” would be acceptable so long as they really did the readings, and it would be sufficient to charge you for those workers taking the day off. Next, yes, what you are describing is customary in a lot of areas. In reality, flooring installation just isn't hard. The hardest part about laying hardwood flooring is squaring up the layout, which again isn't really hard but does require you to have some basic understanding of the process. It is completely doable by someone who has never installed hardwood before and is willing to take extra time. In hardwood installation experience gets you speed, any amateur willing to take their time can install hardwood floors, any finish carpenter or apprentice finish carpenter should easily be able to install it properly. This is not taking anything away from flooring professionals, the ease and speed at which they do what is time consuming for others is impressive. However, even the hardwood companies around here will often send their less skilled workers to install and reserve the skilled workers for finishing. Finally, be careful about insisting on methods after the contract is signed. That is a great way to simply hand your checkbook to your contractor and dare him to do his worst. You get a lot of control over results, but few over the methods used to achieve those results. If the floor is installed properly then you can't insist that the installer have any experience that wasn't in the contract or required by regulation. The moisture content thing is a great example of this, you can't force a contractor to stop work because he didn't take a moisture reading, you can force a contractor to stop work because the floor he is installing is not in an acceptable moisture range. As crazy as it may seem, being right doesn't require intentionality. You either suffer damages or you don't, and stopping work without damages actually damages your contractor and gives him recourse against you. So if you insist on a flooring professional install, you should expect to pay the entire amount he was going to pay his people to install, plus the entire cost of the professional installer, plus any markup on that professional install that is in the contract. Since he has to pay his people for doing nothing, you have to pay his people for doing nothing. Not that this will be the case for you, but anything less would be a gift.

I'm not sure what LVT is. :) I have an appointment with the flooring person for Saturday to test out samples. Cherie, we hate forced hot air because it bothers my and the kids' asthma and allergies so I am actually very happy about these baseboard radiators as radiant heat is much easier on the lungs since it's not blowing hot air all over the place. There is central air for the summer months. We live in Northern NH... it gets cold here for sure. I am going to keep the tile in the kitchen for now and the rest will be new flooring *all going in the same direction* ! We are ripping out the red carpeting, which is in all four bedrooms as well as on the stairs. We want to replace that with flooring and we don't want yet another type of flooring in the house so it makes sense to do the living and dining room as well. When we reconfigure the kitchen, we'll have to match it up and remove the tile at that time.