Service area
Wood Floors in East Kensington, Philadelphia
Deco Hardwood Floor sands, refinishes, installs and rebuilds wood floors and stairs in East Kensington, Philadelphia. The median home here dates to 1943, and 48.9% of the housing was built before 1940, which is what decides whether your floor is a refinish or a restoration.
What is usually under the floor here
Housing this old normally holds narrow strip oak laid straight over joists, and often it has only one sanding left.
In a place where a large share of the housing predates 1940, the floor under the carpet is usually the original one. That means narrow strip oak, sometimes heart pine on upper floors, nailed straight to the joists with no plywood in between. It also means the floor has probably been sanded before, possibly more than once.
Only the wood above the tongue can be sanded, roughly a quarter inch on a traditional floor. A floor that has already given up two of those sandings is a different job from one that has given up none, and the difference is not visible from standing height. We measure at the edge of a board before quoting.
Worth knowing here
Parquet and herringbone turn up under carpet in this stock more often than people expect, and they sand differently: the grain runs in two directions at once, so a drum sander used the normal way tears them.
Whether the federal lead rule applies depends on the house
Approximately 59.1% of the homes here predate 1978, so it comes down to the specific address.
This is a place where the housing stock straddles the 1978 line the EPA rule draws. Roughly half the addresses are covered and roughly half are not, which means the answer is per house rather than per town.
Where it does apply, the rule governs how the sander is set up: containment and a HEPA vacuum collecting dust where it is generated. We check the age of the house before deciding how the work is staged.
How the housing in East Kensington compares
Of the 3,341 housing units in East Kensington, roughly 1,600 were built before 1940 and approximately 2,000 before 1978.
That makes the housing here newer than the 132 Philadelphia neighborhoods in our data taken together, where approximately 82.8% of 733,961 units predate 1978, and below the 60.5% figure for our whole service area. By the share built before 1940, East Kensington ranks 57th of those 132. The full table is published as open housing data.
Within Philadelphia, the oldest housing in our data is in Cedar Park, with a median year of 1925, and the newest is in Kensington, Old, at 1997.
| Place | Median year built | Built before 1940 |
|---|---|---|
| East Kensington | 1943 | 48.9% |
| Fishtown - Lower Kensington | 1928 | 69.4% |
| Kensington, West | 1937 | 52.1% |
| McGuire | 1930 | 64.6% |
| Upper Kensington | 1928 | 70.8% |
| Kensington, Old | 1997 | 25.8% |
| Richmond | 1927 | 71.0% |
What the work here usually looks like
A majority of the homes here are rental. Turnover work runs to a different clock than owner work, and screen and recoat is often the right call where a full refinish is not.
Pennsylvania registers home improvement contractors through the Office of Attorney General rather than licensing them, and the registration number belongs on contracts, estimates and advertising.
What we do in East Kensington
Hardwood Floor Refinishing
Sand the old finish off, repair what needs repairing, and put a new finish down
Dustless Floor Sanding
Vacuum-extraction sanding
Solid Hardwood Floor Installation
Solid wood, nailed down over a wood subfloor
Engineered Hardwood Installation
Real wood over a stable core
Luxury Vinyl Plank (LVP) Installation
Waterproof, quiet, and it does not care about a wet basement
Custom Stair Installation
Treads, risers, stringers and skirt board, built to a drawing instead of a catalog page
Stair Refinishing
Stairs take more wear per square foot than any floor in the house, and they are sanded almost entirely by hand
Hardwood Floor Repair
Board replacement, weaving in new wood, squeaks, gaps and cupping
Why homeowners hire Deco Hardwood Floor
Deco Hardwood Floor is owner operated: the person who quotes wood floor work in East Kensington is the person responsible for it, and the material comes with the labor in one number.
Material and labor in one number
We buy the flooring direct from the distributor and pass the store price through, so you are not sourcing wood on your own between quotes.
Samples come to your house
Samples and larger offcuts come to you, so the color gets chosen in your own light instead of under a showroom lamp.
Stairs and railings built in house
Treads, risers, handrails and newel posts are drawn and built by our own crew. Most flooring crews subcontract stair work or decline it.
The owner quotes the job
The person who measures your floor is the person responsible for the work. There is no salesperson in between.
Measured before it is promised
Remaining thickness is measured at the edge of a board before we say a floor can be sanded, and no price is firm before we have seen the room.
Told straight, including the limits
Vacuum extraction catches most of the sanding dust and not all of it. We tell you that before the job instead of after.
More about who we are and what we will not claim on the About Deco Hardwood Floor page.
Questions about wood floors in East Kensington
Can you tell me what my floor needs over the phone?
We can tell you what is likely, and this page is most of that answer. What we cannot do is quote a floor we have not seen, because remaining thickness and what is under the covering both decide the job and neither is visible in a description.
Do you bring the material?
Yes. We buy direct from the distributor and the material lands in the same number as the labor. Samples and larger offcuts come to the house so you choose in your own light.
My house is from the 1920s. Can the floor still be sanded?
Often, but it is a measurement rather than an assumption. Only the wood above the tongue can be sanded, and a floor that has been refinished twice already may have one pass left. We check at the edge of a board before quoting.
Nearby neighborhoods
Send a photo and we will tell you what you are looking at
Wood floor work in East Kensington 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.
