Although we live in a golden era when it comes to doing things yourself, anytime you tackle something of great magnitude like installing your own floor, you run the risk of doing something that will come back to haunt you in a couple of years. Floors are tricky like that. If you do not know exactly what you are doing, you can royally screw up without seeing the effects until much later. With that in mind, here are three common signs that your floor was installed incorrectly.
Traditional Hardwood Flooring is Tough
Traditional Hardwood is one of the most common flooring types out there and the one that gets installed incorrectly the most. This is partly the nature of the beast. You need to have a completely smooth and even subfloor down before you start placing the wood. Regardless of whether you are using nails or glue or it is the kind of floor that snaps into place, the subflooring is key. If your subflooring is not in the right condition, you run the risk of what is called a “floating floor,” which is when the floor itself “bubbles up” and you have tripping hazards. It will buckle and bow and then you have to take out the offending planks and put down new ones, which is costly and a time constraint.
Be on the Lookout for Moisture When Using Hardwood or Residential Carpet
Another sign that the floor has been improperly installed is when a material is used in a room or area where the environment will cause problems. For example, you don’t want to have a nice carpet in the bathroom because the moisture would lead to insane mold problems. But moisture causes problems everywhere in the home, or at least it can. You need to make sure that you are paying attention to these kinds of things before anything is laid down so that you do not run into these kinds of problems later on. Moisture will ruin residential carpeting and if you don’t pay attention to it, it will cause the nice traditional wood flooring to bow – and that is the least of your problems. Even in Nashville and the greater Middle Tennessee area, moisture can be a problem. If the moisture works its way down into the subfloor (which can also happen if there are cracks or little gaps in between the planks) then you will need to rip the whole thing up.
Incorrect Measurements are a Pain
Have you ever been in a home or business and noticed that the floor seems to slope away from the original straight lines used to lay the floor down in the beginning? This is because the material was not measured correctly. Even if the flooring material is only off by a couple of degrees, over the course of the whole installation process it can magnify so that by the end of a room, you are off by a whole lot. This is true for residential carpet as well, since an improperly installed floor will lead to snagging or loose carpeting in places, which is dangerous.
Putting in a new floor is tough. While it is possible to lay something down yourself, it will probably lead to problems later unless you really know what you are doing. If you are not sure about it, then it is probably best to let the professionals at Ozburn-Hessey handle it for you.
