Flooring

Almost every house in this part of Texas sits directly on a concrete slab, and the slab decides which floors are worth installing. Concrete carries moisture up through it even when the surface reads bone dry, and it moves with the clay underneath it through the seasons. Those two facts rule out a fair amount of what looks good in a showroom, and solid hardwood laid straight onto a slab is a conversation we will usually talk you out of.

What holds up here is porcelain tile over the right membrane, quality luxury vinyl plank over the correct underlayment, and engineered wood where the subfloor allows it. We will tell you which one fits the room rather than which one has the best margin, and in a house with children, dogs, and a back door that opens onto Texas dirt, that answer is more often tile than people expect.

The preparation is where a floor is actually won or lost, and it is the step that gets skipped when a price looks too good. Every floor we install goes over a slab that has been ground flat, moisture tested, and cleared of old adhesive and thinset. Large format tile is unforgiving about flatness in particular: the bigger the tile, the less deviation the substrate is allowed, and lippage on a twenty four inch tile is visible from across the room and impossible to fix afterward without pulling it up.