How to Buy a Hardwood Floor for Less

Real solid hardwood floors are beautiful, durable and last longer than most any other flooring. But real hardwood can be expensive. You don't have to pay full price if you are willing to shop. In fact you can get a screamin' deal if you are diligent. Read on.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Money to pay for you hardwood.

1. Choose a common wood, a solid hardwood that has no factory finish. Two readily available wood flooring materials in the US are white or red oak. There are other woods like maple, cherry, ash, pecan, hickory, pine and fur. Not to mention exotics. But choosing the most common wood in your area is better because you will not buy your wood all at once (unless you are really lucky). Instead you can buy residential leftovers and construction overages for a fraction of the price in small lots.

2. Search for unfinished, solid hardwood. Small lots of these woods on craigslist and in the classifieds appear fairly often. You will need to be much more concerned with the overall thickness as well as the tongue and groove of the hardwood more than the width. It is completely acceptable and aesthetically pleasing to have various wood widths side by side. But different thicknesses can cause installation, sanding, and finishing problems.

3. When buying small lot wood beware that there can be damaged pieces or cut pieces. The tongues and grooves must be intact including the sides and ends in order to install with no face nails. The price on these lots that include damaged wood should be really REALLY low. Most small lot overstocks sell for 50% to 85% below retail depending upon the condition.

4. Buy locally so that you can take a piece of wood from your first lot and physically check that the groove and thickness will work with the next lot. Again, let me stress the importance of choosing a common solid wood flooring to begin with as it commonly milled with similar tongues, grooves and thicknesses.

5. Once you have collected you hardwood turn to a professional for installation and sanding unless you already have experience with this. Finishing is tricky but can be done by a handy homeowner especially if you use a hardwax oil.

Tips & Warnings

• Study hardwood before you start purchasing
• If there is some surface damage to a piece remember that it could be considered "character" once finished.
• You can also find reclaimed floors commonly for sale in densely populated areas.
• Solid hardwood should have 6 sandings before it has to be replaced! That's about 90 years.
• Educate yourself on the difference between floating laminated floors, engineered hardwood and solid hardwood floors to prevent wasting your money by purchasing the wrong thing.
• Be prepared to feel good for using resources that would be otherwise wasted.
• Be prepared to feel even happier when you add up the savings.

Resources

• National Wood Flooring Association

[tundranut]

on 2/12/2009 My daughter and her husband recently bought a house w lots of carpet, and they are dreaming about installing a hardwood floor. Thanks for these amazing professional tips! I'm sure they'll be able to do it now.

[Wasatch]

on 1/7/2009 Good money saving ideas. Thanks

[working]

on 12/6/2008 Wow you did even better than I did. I did 420 sf and the raw oak flooring cost me about $325.00 from two different sources.

[deepthinkin]

on 12/6/2008 Thanks for these tips! When I added on my den, I really wanted hardwood floors to match the rest of the house but didn't think I could afford it. Then I got an inspiration to look for reclaimed floors from demos! What a bargain - I purchased 900 sq ft for $100!