General Contractors and Flooring

General contractors and home builders, in my experience, do not do a good job with specialty trades.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a flooring contractor, so I probably carry around a small chip on my shoulder.  That said, I believe consumers of remolding services should hire a reputable flooring contractor even if they already have a GC.  In my 20+ years of experience in the remodeling industry at many different levels, I witness more flaws in flooring than in all the other trades combined when inspecting new or remodel construction.

Why?  Well, I can see a couple of reasons.  For starters, builders and GCs are not willing to pay even decent rates for flooring work.  Thus, if they sub out the floor work, the tend to hire from the bottom of the barrel.  Additionally, the floor work is also usually the highest margin work, which means the temptation to do the work themselves (or hiring bottom feeders) becomes even more tempting.

This then leads to 2 problems.  The 1st and most obvious is the work is sub-par.  The 2nd problem is that the GC and/or builder know enough about flooring to be dangerous and not nearly enough to be proficient.  In the flooring industry, there is so much to know about all the different types of flooring, that only someone who spends all of their time in the industry can be helpful.  I cannot count the number of times I see mid-grade and often cheap pre-finished flooring installed in nice homes.  I also, (gasp) see a ton of t-molding, quarter round, door jambs that aren't undercut, etc...  Because an average carpenter can probably do an o.k. job installing pre-finished flooring, they insist that pre-finished flooring is the only option.  I suppose this is better than a jack-of-all trades trying to sand and finish a floor, but again, you - the person paying big bucks for a remodel - shouldn't have the most visible and used portion of the project done by hackers and amateurs.

My advice is simple.  Find out who the contractor uses to do the flooring work.  If they don't use someone who has an excellent reputation you can verify on Angie's List or similar site, I would find the flooring company on your own.  Not only will you get better floors, you will probably pay less; avoiding the proverbial double whammy.