Holidays and Floors

As a bit of a tribute to Thanksgiving, I wanted to put out some advice to anyone trying to get their new floor in by the holidays. For the flooring industry, this is a very busy time as so many folks are looking for that extra tough to make their homes the place to be for the holidays.
The biggest piece of advice I can give anyone shopping for a new floor for the holidays is to plan ahead. Everyone in the industry gets busy during the holidays, so don’t expect to order a floor a week before the family is supposed to start coming over with an expectation to have it in your home and installed in time. Plain and simple, unless you are talking carpet this will NOT happen.
Typically many hard surface floors, especially wood floors, are shipped from the manufacturers warehouses and take (on average again) 7-10 business days to be delivered. That’s 2 weeks of time right there and that assumes that the product is in stock.
From here you have to let the floor acclimate (because we want this floor to last for many years) which will typically take another 3-5 days. From here, its install time and depending on how much flooring you are having installed, takes 1-3 days on average. Very large jobs or glue down applications do take longer, so always consult your installer on the time required to complete an installation.
Add that all up and you are looking at 3 weeks or more from the day you order a floor to having it fully installed. This is the average floor process (not to mention all the time spent finding the floor you love that fits your home) and anything faster than this is a huge benefit. Every flooring retailer has some product they keep in stock, so some products can be taken home that day and you reduce your time some, but my point here is to plan ahead and give yourself realistic expectations.
As I’ve always said when it comes to the install process, patience is your friend and plan accordingly. Make sure you talk to the salesperson you work with to get realistic time tables so you can plan ahead and if it sounds too good to be true, question it.