The blog
How to decide about a floor in a region this old
Most flooring advice on the internet was written for a house that could be anywhere. This region is not anywhere: 60.5 percent of the 3,899,409 housing units within fifty miles of Philadelphia were built before 1978, and in the city itself the figure is 82.8 percent. Everything below starts from that.
Latest articles
How long refinishing takes, and when you can walk on it
Sanding is the predictable part. The calendar is set by the finish, and walkable is not the same day as cured.9 minRead
Why hardwood floors squeak, and the fixes that last
A squeak is two pieces of the floor moving against each other. Finding which two is the whole job.9 minRead
More from the blog
Stair railing height: the code in PA, NJ and Delaware
Handrail and guard are two requirements on one railing, and the edition of the code that applies depends on which side of the river the house is on.10 minRead
Parquet floor repair and restoration
The floor people find under carpet and are told to cover again. Most of it can be saved, by a crew that sands it differently.10 minRead
Wide plank flooring, and what changes with the width
A seven inch plank moves about three times as much as a narrow strip. Everything about choosing and installing one follows from that.10 minRead
Refinish or replace: how the decision is actually made
Two contractors can look at the same floor and give opposite answers. The one who measured is the one to believe.10 minRead
Refinishing and staining hardwood stairs
A staircase is the smallest floor in the house and the slowest one to refinish. What is under the carpet decides whether it can be done at all.10 minRead
A water damaged hardwood floor: what can be saved
The most expensive mistake after a leak is acting too fast. A cupped floor that is sanded wet is a floor that gets replaced.10 minRead
Waterproof flooring, and what the word actually covers
The plank is waterproof. The floor is a plank, a joint, a subfloor and a room, and water only has to beat one of them.10 minRead
How to clean hardwood floors without damaging the finish
You are cleaning a coating, not a piece of wood. Most damage we are called to fix was done with a mop and a product that promised shine.10 minRead
Refinishing a floor in an old Philadelphia house
What decides whether your floor can be sanded, and why the answer here is different from the answer in a newer suburb.11 minRead
What is under your stair carpet
Almost everyone lifts a corner, sees wood, and concludes there is a hardwood staircase under there. Usually there is not.9 minRead
Solid or engineered, and why the basement decides
The choice is presented as taste. It is usually settled by what is under the room, before anyone gets to taste.9 minRead
The lead rule decides how your sander is built
In a region that is 60.5 percent pre-1978, this is not an edge case. It is the default condition of the work.8 minRead
Why your floor gaps in winter
Seasonal gaps are the floor working normally. Knowing which gaps are not is what keeps you from paying to fix nothing.9 minRead
Prefinished or site-finished
You will be told the difference is dust and drying time. The difference that lasts is the bevel and whether the floor can ever be matched.9 minRead
When the article has answered it, the service pages say what the work includes:
How this gets written
Every article here has to add something the rest of the internet does not, and the thing we can add is our own housing data.
Our own numbers, published
The housing figures in these articles come from the dataset we built and published at /data/, from the American Community Survey 2023 five year estimates. It is free to download and free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. If a number appears in an article, you can check it against the source.
Code cited by section, not paraphrased
Where an article says the code requires something, it names the section. Philadelphia adopts the 2021 International Residential Code, and Pennsylvania amends it. A number copied from a national article can be wrong here, and we would rather cite than summarise.
Written by the crew that does the work
Nobody here is a staff writer. These are the answers we give at estimates, written down. That is also why some of them say a job is not worth doing, or that waiting is the right move.
Updated, not republished
When the Census releases a new five year estimate or a code edition is adopted, the existing article gets updated and the change is stamped. We do not republish the same piece under a new headline.
Send a photo and we will tell you what you are looking at
Wood floor work across the Philadelphia region starts with someone reading the house. We quote every job ourselves, with no salesperson in between, and a photo of the floor gets you a straight answer faster than a form does.
