Hardwood flooring in Webster Groves, MO

This city was laid out for wood floors. The 1890s houses around Tuxedo Park, the four-squares and Tudors that filled in through the 1920s, even the smaller Old Orchard bungalows - almost all of them came with red oak strip nailed over board subfloor. In the larger Webster Park houses you often find quarter-sawn oak with ray fleck in the front rooms. That is not something you replicate with a modern product, which is why our first move is always to find out what is still under the carpet.

Hardwood also fits how people here treat their houses. Buyers walking a Webster Groves listing expect to see wood, not carpet, on the main floor. A sanded and refinished oak floor makes deep baseboards, stained trim and a plaster ceiling read as one piece. Even in the postwar ranches on the south end, where the oak is plainer and often narrower, bringing it back does more for the room than anything you could lay on top of it.

Open an old Webster Groves floor and you generally find one-by boards run diagonally across the joists, sometimes with gaps wide enough to telegraph through a new floor. We screw the loose boards down to kill squeaks, sheet over the worst of it where a new install needs a flat plane, and flag any joist that has sagged. Steam radiators complicate the edges: their feet and pipe penetrations have to be worked around cleanly, and old scab patches around them usually need new wood laced in.

Then there is our weather. Summer dew points sit in the seventies and January runs bone dry, so wood in this region expands and shrinks noticeably. We acclimate material in the house before it goes down, leave proper expansion gaps at every wall and hide them under shoe molding, and set humidity expectations honestly. Thin winter gaps between boards are normal here and close back up in spring. Running a humidifier through the coldest weeks keeps that movement small.

It starts with the in-home measure. Erik walks the rooms, checks subfloor and transitions, and talks through what makes sense for the way you use the house. If you want to handle boards and see finishes, come to the Maryland Heights showroom on Weldon Pkwy where the Hallmark, Portercraft and Fusion racks are. Once you approve the number we book a start date and tell you how long the crew will be in the house.

On a refinish, the crew clears and protects the space, runs dustless sanding equipment through the cuts, and then we do the part customers talk about most: mixing and testing stain samples on your own floor, side by side, until you pick one. Coats go on with dry time between, and we send progress photos as the color comes up. Will, John and Bobby handle most of the refinishing work. We walk the finished floor with you before the last invoice.