You’re probably wondering how you’re going to be able to implement hardwood flooring into your home without burning holes in your pockets on labor costs and professional advisor’s fees, but that’s just going to be a much bigger gamble than you think it is. Hardwood, aside from not being inexpensive, is also a very delicate material that needs proper handling. Plus, the installation itself is very tricky because hardwood expands and contracts and the material is much harder to cut and drill than the typical stuff that floorings are made of. Hardwood is already too expensive to for you to risk more possible expenses due to incompetent installation.

The huge variety of hardwood flooring materials available for you to choose from also adds an element of creative potential into the whole installation process. Wood from oak, hickory, pecan, and other deciduous trees are often lumped into the hardwood category, and so are pine and bamboo floors. Moreover, the wide array of designs and styles such as tongue-in-grove planks and parquet tiles allows you the freedom to custom-pick the best kind that matches your taste and which one looks most appropriate for your desired theme. Other than having an aesthetic factor of course, you’d also want your flooring to resist nicks and scrapes at the same time.

Thus, for the handyman aspirant purchasing wood and laying them down as flooring all by yourself can be quite an exciting and tempting thought, not to mention the big savings that you can most likely have for not having to pay for professional advice.

Contrary to popular belief however, hardwood flooring installation is a lengthy and complex process that should be done by a professional.

Sure, it sounds like you can install your hardwood flooring all on your own, but it really isn’t as easy as measuring space and piecing things into this space all together like a jigsaw puzzle. The flooring material is just the start of the whole thing, that which makes it look very simple. You will need carpentry skills and woodworking experience to make a fairly decent job here, though it gets even more complicated when we get to the discussion of affixing the hardwood itself. You’ll also be surprised that there are some kinds of hardwood that would require you to glue them to the sub-flooring to conceal any screw holes, while others have to be set up with countersunk screws and the holes loaded with wood putty. For added durability especially from liquid spills and general wear-and-tear, the hardwood floor also has to be coated with a heavy-duty urethane.

Chances are, if you try to carry out the installation all on your own, you will not get the solid advice and results that you might originally have wanted. The durability of your flooring will be put at risk and the reinstallation costs down the line will have you wishing you had consulted with a professional instead in the first place. Hardwood flooring installation is a very tricky and serious process that shouldn’t be placed in the hands of an amateur or a professional handyman wannabe. One wrong move and you’ll find yourself needing to redo the whole thing from scratch. Do yourself a big favor and have your floor installed professionally.

How you prefer your floor to look when all chips are down will influence what kind of wood your flooring will go with. Styles and facades vary: do you want a sleek exterior, a smooth feel, or the robust look that wide planks offer? Despite the availability of different kinds of wood that look similar or very much closely alike in each class of style, the type of material that a certain wood is made up of will say how far in terms of quality it will go.

Wood quality is categorized as First, Second or Third wood in their respective ranks, Clear wood being the finest—having little to no grain marks or knot holes in it. If this already sounds complicated or technical to you now, that just means you’d have to get a professional flooring contractor’s advice. Even the cliché “there’s more to things than meets the eye” is very true for hardwood flooring. Just because a certain type of wood looks nice and hard-wearing does not make it so. A professional in this field can best recommend the best solutions to your needs and wants. You don’t want to end up having your floor redone a couple of months or years later just because you chose a substandard wood over the better ones, only because they looked alike, or nice for that matter.

It’s natural for you to ask advice from your family and friends regarding what they think are best for some of the biggest decisions that you will be making, including installing hardwood flooring in your home. Yes, so-and-so might have told you that you’d better get laminate flooring instead because it’s easy to install, it’s readily available and best of all, it’s inexpensive compared to some other products. Or maybe you heard from a friend that ceramic tiles would be best because it’s one of the most time-tested construction materials.

It doesn’t matter where you got the information from. What’s important is that you’re able to differentiate between personal opinion and professional advice, and know why it’s important to do so. Consider having advised your mother to take a fatal ingestion of aspirin just because you “heard from a friend that it’s the best thing to do if you have dengue fever” instead of consulting with a doctor. While misinformation in hardwood flooring installation will not cost you a loved one’s dear life, it can spell future major disasters that can translate to thousands of dollars to be lost.

I know you’re excited, but before rushing to get those pieces of wood plastered right away unto your floor, just as you can’t trust your amateur self to do a decent job for hardwood installation, neither can you expect a general contractor. I know how tempting it can be to hire a general contractor instead of a hardwood flooring expert to do the job for an economically practical person like you, but it’s not really the wisest step to take.

First and foremost, there are a lot of general contractors out there who’ll simply take the job for your money and end up with a pretty mediocre project. You can’t expect a general pediatrician to perform a surgeon’s brain operation just because he’s also in the medical field; neither can you expect a mere general contractor who has only had experience in or specialization on roof installation to do a decent hardwood flooring installation job for you.

Secondly, it is again very risky. The real measure of the quality of a flooring installation doesn’t usually come out until after some time when the flooring begins to scuff, warp and split earlier than expected. In case you also forgot, hardwood is again a very expensive and delicate material. If placed under the hands of an unqualified amateur, who knows how much more you’ll be spending for a new batch of hardwood to replace previously mishandled ones, if you’d still be able to afford it after, that is.

So far the major myths that might have caused you the biggest savings have been debunked, so another smart plan comes into mind that is typical of the budget-conscious: install a less expensive product now, and once you’ve saved a huge amount of money later on, replace it with a better one.

However, professional flooring experts will tell you that this is not a smart option.

First off, logic will tell you that if you calculate the costs of purchasing cheap materials plus the costs of getting a new set of replacement materials later, that’s going to sum up to a big price tag, compared to just proceeding directly to the installation of a good set of hardwood flooring.

Secondly, if ever you decide on such renovation plans, you’d have to remove all your furniture before you can take out your previous flooring to replace it with the new one—it’s very tiring and such a waste of energy. And if you won’t be able to do everything by yourself, then you’d have to pay some laborers to help you out with the job. It’s practically impossible to save money on two separate projects.

It’d be better to hold off on your project for a while until you’ve got sufficient budget to afford the best quality flooring that you can for your remodeling project than cut the project into two, impractical parts.

Conclusion:

In a nutshell, the costs of having a flooring professional to do your hardwood flooring installation job for you should be treated as an investment rather than as an expense. You have to think for a long-term solution for your home and future expenses. Sure, you may spend a relatively huge sum of money to let a professional take over the job for you at this time, but knowing that you you’re getting what you’ve paid for will make it more than worth the price. Just imagine the bliss of not having to worry about things like future repair costs because you let the expert handle the task, or the horrors of constant needs for renovations just because you didn’t decide to consult with a professional earlier.