Flooring installation for New York homes

We install every main type of floor, so we can recommend the one that suits the room. We look at the room, ask how it is used, and tell you what will last. Then we take care of the part nobody sees: the old floor, the subfloor, the leveling and the transitions into the next room.

Every floor is a trade-off. This is how they stack up on the things that matter most in a New York home.

In an apartment, the choice is often shaped by the building as well as the room. Many leases and co-op house rules require most of a room's floor to be covered with carpet or rugs, and many buildings care about how much sound a hard floor lets through to the unit below. We will ask about both before we recommend anything.

Basements are their own case. Below grade, moisture decides the floor, and which floors work in a basement narrows the choice to the ones that can live on a slab.

A subfloor is the structural layer your finished floor sits on. In a house or a walk-up it is usually plywood or planks nailed across the joists. In an elevator building or a newer condo it is usually the concrete slab. Anything between the two, such as leveling compound, underlayment or an old floor that stays down, sits on top of the subfloor and is not part of it.

What is under your floor decides how the new one goes down, and it drives much of the price. New York has two main kinds of base.

Prewar walk-ups, brownstones and row houses usually have wood subfloors on joists, often under two or three layers of older flooring. Solid hardwood can be nailed into them, and we check for loose boards, squeaks and dips first. Postwar elevator buildings and newer condos usually sit on concrete slabs. Over a slab, floors are floated or glued down, and engineered wood takes the place of solid wood.

Either way, a floor is only as flat as its base. Vinyl plank shows every dip, tile cracks over a base that flexes, and laminate joints can open over a hump. So we check the flatness across the room, then level low spots with compound or add new underlayment where it is needed. This is the step that separates a floor that lasts from one that clicks, squeaks or cracks within a year.

Older homes can hide older floors. Nine-inch tiles and the black adhesive under them, common in older kitchens and basements, are tested before anyone lifts them. Often the simplest answer is to cover them with a new floor rather than take them up.

We price the whole job rather than a flat rate per square foot, because a per-square-foot number hides the part of the job that varies most. Every flooring installation cost has three parts: the material, the labor to lay it, and the preparation the base needs before it can go down.

The material is the part you can price yourself, by the box or by the square yard. Vinyl plank, laminate, tile, carpet and hardwood sit at different points, and within each there is a wide range.

The labor follows the material and the room. Floating floors go down quickly. Glue-down, nail-down and tile take longer. Closets, doorways, radiators, angled walls and stairs add cuts, and every cut is made by hand.

The preparation is where two rooms of the same size part ways. Taking up an old floor, leveling an uneven base, adding underlayment or a moisture barrier, and stiffening a wood subfloor for tile can each be a larger line than the floor itself. In a prewar building with three layers of old flooring, it usually is.

Access matters in the city too. A walk-up on the fifth floor, a freight elevator with set hours, and a building with narrow work hours and paperwork all add time, and time is part of the price.

We measure and look at the base first, then give you one estimate that covers all of it. For a worked example on one floor, read what a vinyl plank installation costs.