5 Things to Consider Prior To Hiring a Portland Flooring Contractor
1. Is your contractor licensed and bonded? If not, you could suffer greatly financially. If anything were to happen on the job-site regarding the safety and welfare of all the contractors’ employees, you personally would be responsible if anything were to happen to them physically, i.e. medical bills, time-loss wages, etc…
Floor Factors is licensed and bonded in both Oregon and Washington, so there should be no concern about the legitimacy of your flooring installers.
2. Does your flooring installer provide an installation warranty? If not, you could be in trouble if anything happens to occur post-install. We run into customers on a consistent basis that commissioned a small independent flooring contractor or “handyman” that improperly installed material, or have had issues with the quality of the install.
Floor Factors provides a 1-year installation warranty that covers any repair costs accrued due to improper installation of the material in question.
3. If Linoleum/Marmoleum is your material of choice, make sure your Flooring Contractor is certified by the manufacturer to install their products. The manufacturer of Linoleum brand products, Forbo, will not warranty the material unless being installed by a Flooring Contractor who has undergone an installation seminar and has received his certificate from Forbo directly. Marmoleum is extremely difficult to install, the installation is NOT comparable to the installation of Sheet Vinyl, which a lot of contractors and homeowners alike assume it is. There are many restrictions regarding the sub-floor conditions and additional steps that need to be taken post-install.
Floor Factors Linoleum/Hard Surface installers are all certified through Forbo to install all of their products, especially Marmoleum. So make sure, whoever is installing your Marmoleum flooring is certified to do so.
4. Like Marmoleum, there are many carpets, depending on the type of construction there are multiple methods of installation. Some carpets have to be directly glued to the subfloor or to the pad, some carpets can be stretched in (which is typically standard for most residential products), some higher-end residential products including most wool carpets need to be “power” stretched using a Power Stretcher. Installing carpet that is designed to be power-stretched without the power-stretcher will result in the carpet typically buckling and loosening up to the point that it will wrinkle and fold, at this point the carpet will need to be re-stretched in place, which if your contractor does not warranty their install, will cost money.
Floor Factors carpet installers are Union, and are all certified journeymen, which generally equates to a minimum of 4 years of experience in the field. We will always install your carpet correctly, and if something ends up occurring that requires a re-stretch, we will do so at no charge (within our 1-year warranty time-frame).
5. Is your flooring installer reputable with years of prior installation experience? There are a lot of installers, especially in the summer months that come out of the woodwork hoping to monopolize on the long lead-times of most reputable companies. Especially this summer season, a lot of installers are months out for installation. These installers are hoping that their minimal lead-times will entice customers and be important enough to persuade them to hire these less experienced and in some cases, bad installers.
Floor Factors can be busy, especially during the summer season; however we do employ through the local flooring installation union approximately 50-80 installers at any given time. By having such a large staff of Journeymen installers, we can generally keep our lead-times down to at the most 3-4 weeks. If time is an issue just let us know, depending on the size of the job and the type of material being installed, sometimes we can move some things around within our schedule to accommodate yours. Unfortunately, if we cannot accommodate your time-frame, just beware of the quality of installer your hiring to do work that if installed properly should last 10-20 years +!