Flooring Installation in Morrisville, NC

The floor feels soft, springy or uneven when you walk across it, or there is a musty smell near the floor that airing out the room does not fix. Those are the calls we take most often from Morrisville homeowners, and neither one improves on its own.

RK Renovation handles flooring installation across Morrisville and the rest of Wake County. Luxury vinyl plank, engineered hardwood, laminate and tile installed over a subfloor that has been checked for flatness and moisture first.

What the price covers

• Subfloor moisture and flatness testing. A calcium chloride or relative humidity reading on slab, and a straightedge check on wood subfloor, before any product is recommended or ordered.
• Removal and haul away of old flooring. Carpet, pad, sheet vinyl or old tile pulled and hauled the same day, with the subfloor underneath inspected rather than covered back up.
• Subfloor correction. Self leveling underlayment, plywood overlay or spot repairs to rotten or springy sections, corrected before new material goes down rather than telegraphed through it.

Flooring Installation in Morrisville, in practice

Before any flooring product gets recommended, we test what it is going down onto. On a slab, that means a calcium chloride test or an in situ relative humidity reading rather than guessing from how the concrete looks or feels. On a wood subfloor in Morrisville, it means a straightedge across the room checking for humps and dips, since most flooring manufacturers specify a tolerance around three sixteenths of an inch over ten feet. Skipping this step is how a homeowner ends up with LVP that shows every seam because the subfloor telegraphs through it, or engineered hardwood that cups within months because the moisture reading nobody took would have flagged the problem. We test first in every Wake County home, then talk through which product actually fits the reading.

Flooring is not inert once it leaves the box. Engineered hardwood and LVP expand and contract with the humidity of the room they sit in, which is why manufacturers specify an acclimation period, commonly three to five days for engineered wood, before a single plank gets cut. We stage material in the actual room in Morrisville, not a garage or a truck, so it adjusts to the conditions it will live in. Installation then leaves an expansion gap at the perimeter, usually a quarter to a half inch depending on the product, hidden under base shoe rather than caulked shut. Transitions between rooms are planned at the same stage, since a floor with no room to move will buckle at the first seasonal swing.

Questions from Morrisville homeowners