Important Question : Why is Hardwood flooring depot not ZeroLot vetted?..
We are still deciding between vendors. Overall, all the people we have vetted have been pretty nice and customer service has been good all around. I am leaning towards HFD because I found Reza the easiest to communicate with, knowledgable, and what he says lines up with most of my own research into everything. Eric from Venetian has also been very responsive as have the sales people from MAC and Tompkins. However MAC and Tompkins are also more expensive so I am 'weighting' them less.
I know Qwerty said Reza was going to do 1.00/sqft tile demo and 3.50/sq ft installation labor for him. He is charging me a little more than that (1.25 for demo and 3.75 for installation). However, because I must have seemed overly worried about painting he finally agreed to have his installers paint the baseboards for me as well (at an additional charge). He is also ready to replace baseboards. When I add these costs, for Provenza Old World Reza's quotes might be in the same range as Eric's. However, for the Duchateau brand Reza's price is slightly better than Venetian but that brand is a bit more expensive to begin with.
There are few specific woods that Reza has really good prices on because he has inventory in his warehouse. In those specific cases, his quotes are way lower than Venetian. But the wood is not necessarily a perfect color match for our house.
Phew!! Sorry if that was too much rambling.
Reza's design suggestions for coloring etc have also been pretty good though and again in keeping with our own personal tastes. However, even though he uses Bostik Vapor lock for the downstairs glue, he uses Mapei 975 for upstairs and there will be an extra charge (+400) for using Bostik Vapor Lock upstairs.
Does anybody have experience with the Mapei glue?
So small things like that add up.
But he hinted that he might probably cover some of the painting costs, especially if we do the whole house with him (all wood or wood+carpet).
So again, the question is :
Why is Hardwood Flooring depot not ZeroLot vetted? ;-)