Hardwood flooring in Kirkwood, MO

Kirkwood was built on wood floors. The Victorians and foursquares around the train station went down on quarter-sawn white oak, the 1920s Tudors off Geyer Road on plain-sawn red oak, and the postwar ranches in Osage Hills on two-and-a-quarter-inch strip. Almost none of it was ever meant to be covered up. When a homeowner in this town pulls back wall-to-wall carpet, there is a real chance the best floor in the house has been hiding under it for forty years.

That history sets the standard for anything new. A wide gray plank that looks fine in a fresh build out west reads wrong in a 1908 house on Woodlawn Avenue, where the trim, the doors and the stair treads are all oak. We tend to steer Kirkwood owners toward matching what the house already owns: species, board width, and a stain that sits comfortably alongside the original instead of fighting it from across the hall.

Older Kirkwood houses sit on joists with diagonal one-by pine subfloor over a full basement. That takes nails beautifully, but a century of settling leaves squeaks and dips. We screw down loose boards, shim the low spots, and check joist spans before anything new goes on. Post-1950 ranches usually have plywood, flatter but sometimes soft near a bath where a toilet flange leaked for years. We cut those sections out and patch them rather than planking over the problem.

Then there is the weather. St. Louis summers bring dew points in the seventies, winter runs bone dry, and wood answers by swelling and shrinking. We deliver material and let it acclimate inside the house for several days before the first board is fastened, and we leave a real expansion gap at every wall behind the base shoe. Skip either step and the floor cups in August or opens visible gaps in February.

It starts with a free in-home measure. Erik walks every room, checks the subfloor, looks at door swings and transitions, and talks through species, width and stain direction. Samples go home with you. Once you approve the written quote, we order material and set a start date, and the boxes arrive at the house early so the wood can acclimate to your rooms. Nothing gets fastened to a subfloor we have not seen dry and flat.

On install days we protect the path in, tear out and haul away the old floor, prep the subfloor, then lay. For a refinish, we sand dustless, spend an hour with you testing stain samples on your own boards, then coat. Progress photos come to your phone as it goes. At the end we set base shoe and thresholds, clean up, and walk the entire floor with you before anybody calls it finished.