Hardwood floor installation in Queens

It moves too much with the product and the preparation for an average to be useful. The wood alone can differ several times over between a basic engineered board and a wide solid plank.

What we can tell you is what your job needs, which of the four cost drivers above apply to it, and a figure that holds once we have seen the room.

It depends on what you are laying over. Over a wood subfloor, a moisture barrier and usually an underlayment appropriate to the fixing method. Over concrete, a proper moisture barrier is not optional, and in an apartment an acoustic layer is often required as well.

Before any of that, the subfloor has to be flat, dry, clean and firmly fixed. Preparation is the part that decides whether a floor is still quiet and level in five years.

Not directly, because there is nothing to nail into and concrete carries moisture. It can be done by building a subfloor over the slab first, which costs height and money.

In practice, over a slab we would fit engineered wood. It is designed for exactly this and it is what we use in the newer buildings in Long Island City, Astoria and downtown Flushing.

A floating engineered floor in a simple rectangular room is within reach of a careful person with time.

The parts that catch people out are not the laying. They are getting the subfloor flat, handling moisture over concrete, setting out so the last row is not a sliver, and cutting around doorways and thresholds neatly. Those are also the parts that are expensive to put right afterwards.

Not always. Some products can go over an existing floor if it is sound, flat and firmly fixed, which saves both the removal cost and the mess.

It has to come up when it is loose or damaged, when the height change would cause problems at doors, or when what is there is glued parquet on a slab that would not give a stable base. We tell you which case you are in when we look.

Below grade, moisture is the governing question rather than a detail. Solid wood is not suitable there, and even engineered wood needs the moisture condition checked and dealt with first.

The same care applies in the coastal parts of the borough, where a good deal of the housing was rebuilt or raised after 2012 and the subfloor and moisture condition is the first thing worth establishing. Where wood is genuinely a risk we would suggest vinyl plank instead, and say so.

In a co-op, usually yes, and installation is watched more closely than refinishing because it changes the floor build-up and the sound transmission.

Expect an alteration agreement, a certificate of insurance naming the corporation and the managing agent, set working hours, and often a requirement about the underlayment. We get that started early because it is the part that moves a date.