Elite Hardwood Floors
Elite Hardwood Floors
Ross has the largest lots and some of the oldest estate homes in the county, and the floors inside them are generally worth restoring rather than replacing. We see specialty species, wide and narrow plank in the same house, herringbone and border inlays framing the formal rooms, and original wood that has been down for the better part of a century.
Work like that runs slower and it should. Matching a repair into an old floor with unusual grain or a hand-applied finish takes more careful color work than a modern oak floor does, and inlay and border patterns have to be cut and fitted rather than laid in a straight run. We price that in honestly at the start instead of finding it halfway through and coming back to you with a change order.
For installation, refinishing, or restoration-grade repair in Ross, call today for a free estimate.
A herringbone or a bordered floor cannot be repaired the way a straight-run floor can. Every piece is cut to a pattern, and dropping a new board into a herringbone means matching the angle and the length exactly or the pattern walks off true across the room. Borders and inlays are worse, since they were often cut and fitted on site by someone working to no standard dimension at all. We template these rather than measure them, cutting from a pattern taken off the existing floor. It is slow. On a formal Ross room it can take longer to repair twenty square feet of border than to sand and finish the rest of the floor. That belongs in the estimate at the start rather than in a conversation partway through. Next door in San Anselmo we see the same period detail in smaller houses.
Work on a century-old floor is priced differently from work on a modern one, and the difference is almost entirely time. Sanding runs slower because old boards are not uniform in thickness and an aggressive pass takes out more than it should. Color matching on repairs is done by sample, which means making several and letting them dry before choosing, not mixing something on the spot. Original finishes sometimes need testing before we know what will bond to them. And rooms with plaster, original trim, and finishes nobody makes anymore need protection built before any equipment comes through the door. All of that shows up as hours. What it buys is a floor that is still the original floor. Replacing it is faster and often cheaper, and on a Ross house it is usually the wrong trade.