About us
About Wilmington NC Hardwood Flooring | Measured, Not Guessed
Wilmington NC Hardwood Flooring is a hardwood flooring contractor working across New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties. We install, sand, refinish and repair wood floors in houses from the 1890s heart pine downtown to slab-built new construction in Brunswick Forest, and we do not touch carpet, tile or sheet vinyl. If that is the job you want, we are the wrong call and we will say so on the phone rather than after a visit.
We have spent 15 years and more than 4,500 completed flooring projects learning that in this climate the things that destroy wood floors are almost never visible when you quote them. So our meters come out on the estimate visit rather than the first day of work, the readings go on the quote, the same crew that surveys your house does the work, and we will talk you out of a job when a recoat or a crawl space fix is the better answer.
About Wilmington NC Hardwood Flooring
We are a hardwood flooring contractor working across New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties. Installation, sanding, refinishing and structural repair, for houses from the 1890s heart pine downtown to slab-built new construction in Brunswick Forest.
We have been working on floors in this region since 2011.
We do not do carpet, tile or sheet vinyl. We will remove them to get at a subfloor, but if the job you want is carpet throughout we are the wrong call and will say so on the phone rather than after a visit.
How We Work
Readings before a price
Moisture content of the existing floor or subfloor at several points, interior temperature and humidity, and a crawl space inspection where there is one. NWFA guidelines call for the subfloor and flooring to sit within 2% for plank and 4% for strip, so we measure rather than estimate.
A written, itemised quote
Material, preparation, labour and finishing on separate lines, with exclusions stated. If the subfloor is an unknown until we lift a board, that is written down as an unknown.
Containment set up properly
HVAC returns taped, doorways sealed, and every machine on HEPA collection. The edger too, which is the one usually left bare.
The same crew, start to finish
No subcontracting. The people who quoted the job are the people in your house, and you get a walk-through before we leave.
What We Use
- Sanding
- Lagler Hummel belt sander and Lagler Trio planetary, Bona edger, Festool for detail and stair work.
- Finishes
- Bona Traffic HD, Pallmann and Loba waterborne systems, Rubio Monocoat for matte oiled floors.
- Flooring
- Mohawk, Shaw, Bruce, Mullican, Anderson Tuftex, Palmetto Road and Coretec, supplied through Horizon Forest Products.
- Measurement
- Delmhorst and Wagner moisture meters, thermo-hygrometer, 10-foot straightedge for substrate flatness.
Nothing on that list is exotic. The distinction is that the meters come out on the estimate visit rather than on the first day of work, when it is too late for a reading to change the plan.
How We Price And What We Will Not Do
Itemised, not a round number
Material, preparation, labour and finishing on separate lines. A single figure hides which part of the job someone has left out.
Unknowns written as unknowns
Subfloor condition cannot be known until a board comes up. It gets a provisional sum and a rate, never silence and a surprise.
No subcontracting
The crew that quotes the job does the job. It is why we can say what we will find and why the price tends to hold.
We will talk you out of work
A recoat instead of a full sand, crawl space work before refinishing, or waiting for a young slab to dry. All of those cost us money in the short run.
No carpet, tile or sheet vinyl
We lift them to get at a subfloor and we do not install them. If that is the job, we are the wrong call and we will say so on the phone.
No pressure after the quote
You get the written scope and the readings. We do not chase, and the readings stay useful to you whoever does the work.
Where We Work
New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties. That takes in Wilmington and its neighbourhoods, the barrier islands at Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach, Kure Beach, Figure Eight Island and Oak Island, the Brunswick County new build around Leland, Belville and Navassa, the historic districts at Southport and Burgaw, and the Pender County commuter belt through Hampstead, Rocky Point, Topsail and Surf City.
No travel charge within roughly thirty miles of Wilmington. The areas served page sets out what differs between them and why the county you are in changes the quote.
Why We Work The Way We Do Here
We did not start out taking a moisture reading in every room. We started out doing what most flooring companies here still do, which is to lay a good floor, finish it properly and move on. Then we spent the first few summers going back to floors that had cupped, and every single one of them had the same thing underneath: a crawl space nobody had looked at, or a slab nobody had tested.
Wilmington sits in a humid subtropical belt where the morning relative humidity runs around 85% for most of the year and the dew point stays above 70°F right through the summer. A wood floor is happy between 30 and 50% relative humidity. That gap is not a detail on this coast, it is the whole job, and it is why a floor that was flat in March can cup in August in a house two streets from one that never moves.
So the way we work now is backwards from how most quotes are produced. We measure first, write down what we found, and only then put a price on it. If the readings say the floor is not ready, we say so and we wait, and we have lost work for saying it. We would rather lose the job than sand a floor that is going to move.
Who We Buy From And Why It Matters To You
We buy material through Horizon Forest Products, whose Wilmington branch keeps real stock of the species we use most, and we carry Palmetto Road engineered alongside Mohawk, Shaw, Bruce, Mullican and Anderson Tuftex. That is a local supply chain rather than a container order, and it has two practical consequences for you.
The first is that we can usually get a replacement board in a current product within a few days rather than a few weeks, which matters on a repair. The second is that material is delivered into your conditioned house to acclimate rather than sitting in a trailer in a yard somewhere in July, which is where a great deal of flooring in this region picks up the moisture that later shows up as gapping or cupping.
On the finishing side we run Bona, Pallmann, Loba and Rubio Monocoat, and we sand with Lagler Hummel and Trio machines on Bona DCS dust containment with HEPA filtration, including on the edger. Moisture is read with Delmhorst and Wagner meters, and slabs are tested with in-situ relative humidity probes rather than a plastic sheet taped down overnight.
About Us Questions
Are you licensed and insured?
North Carolina has no flooring licence, and the general contractor licence only applies to single projects of $40,000 or more, so most residential flooring sits below it. Ask us for our certificate of insurance and we will send it from the broker, which is the part that actually matters.
Do you subcontract the work?
No. The crew that quotes the job does the job.
What areas do you cover?
New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties. No travel charge within about thirty miles of Wilmington, and we say so beforehand if there is one.
Do you do carpet or tile?
No. Wood floors only. We will lift carpet or vinyl to get at a subfloor, but we do not install them.
Ask us the awkward questions
Insurance certificate, references, what we would do about your crawl space. Better before the quote than after.