Floors : Solid hardwood, Engineered hardwood or Laminate

Floors : Solid hardwood floors, Engineered Hardwood or Laminate floors.

When deciding what type of wood floors to install during a renovation or a new build, there are few facts to pay attention to.  

Most wood floors manufactures do not recommend installing their product in bathrooms or kitchens – areas, where temperature and humidity can fluctuate significantly, but in many cases due to design and layout we are left with no option but continuing the hardwood or engineered hardwood into the kitchen area and around the kitchen island to avoid transitions into a different floor type material and there is nothing terribly wrong with that, but our concern with falling objects or the effects of the high circulation in the kitchen area, that could result in a premature wear to engineered or specially to solid hardwood flooring.

Bathrooms are a whole different scenario, where wood hardwood floors should be always avoid.

As an admirer of inlay works on floors, I have being a big supporter of solid hardwood floors, best material to custom design and put together these floors designs, but during the last few years I also learnt to appreciate the benefits of laminate floors according to the demands and details of every specific project.

For example I consider a medium quality, no gluing, laminate flooring a good choice for living areas in basements.

In recent years laminate has come a long way in design, durability and in a more effective and trouble free installations procedures. I prefer glue free floors, I like the possibility of disassembling the floor planks to get to a damage spot but I pay good attention to the strength of the snapping design of every floor I choose as some are better that others, making possible a successful second installation in this type of situation.

Laminate is a pressurize synthetic product with a harder surface than any natural wood, that is also highly resistant to damage with finishing warranties between 10 and 20 years from manufactures.

In the other hand laminate flooring does not repair easily and it cannot be sanded or refinished and replacing pieces after time could show differences in wear and age among new an old pieces.

Engineered hardwood flooring is a type of wood floor built from several layers of wood or plywood, while Solid hardwood floors are made from single pieces of wood. Natural wood is softer than the pressurized composite surface of laminate floors and it can dent more easily.

Solid or engineered hardwood floors can be refinished or repair easily without the need to replace planks as it is in the case of laminate flooring. They also can be sanded and refinished several times, up to 6 times with solid hardwood floors and 3 with engineered hardwood lasting a lifetime when well maintained.

The life-spam of a laminate floor is about  20 years, as it cannot be sanded or refinished in most cases will accumulate all scratches and damages through its life time till it is finally replace.

In my opinion the wood floor selection is always a decision base in the particular circumstances surrounding the uses and expectancy of the people who will pay for it and ultimate care for the floor of their choice, on my side I am just left with a few well known recommendations and the responsibility of making sure of a proper and successful installation, but that makes a very important topic for another post in this blog   

The renovation and building contractor

The building and renovation contractor

Generally life is not a picnic in most lines of work, but when you make your living as a contractor in the building and renovation field, it really can get tough at times.

 I have being in this business for over twenty years, When I take a look back I can see few highs, lots of more lows, continuous stress and countless long days filled with hard work, love for what we do it is the only sensible reason why anyone would really want to keep doing this for that long.

Contractors as car sales men and in a different way lawyers, are all tinted with a bit of mistrust that you have to start by clearing out every time you start dealing with a client. For sure, it has being a well gained reputation for some, that it is easily applied to all.

Popular TV shows in recent years had contributed to disgrace the personality of the construction contractor even further, misleading the consumer with not realistic expectations about the reality of a building or renovation project in the real world.

I can easily count how many decent and knowledgeable contractors I have known to quit, fed up with the stress and frustration and went to pursue different means to make a living, I also know quite a few stories about those who lost everything trying.

In a regular scenario, to be successful in this occupation all anyone will need is to master the ability to apply a competitive price to a degree of quality in a work project or vice versa, but reality and practice show different.

Even when all conditions are created and everything is planned; delays, accidents and problems will happen and the status quo of a real world renovation/ building process will end up taking over. All mishaps cost money to the contractor that at the same time start losing the most needed client’s confidence, twice the trouble for every time something goes wrong.

To stay in business, the contractor has to keep competitive and that’s one of the most challenging things a decent contractor will have to deal with.  80 % of all potential clients will make their hiring decision based solely on price. That’s leave us, the decent contractors to share only a 20 % of the actual market out there.

Right from the start, we will lose the 80 % of the market because we will not lie or play tricks to get a job. Once I take my measurements, analyze the drawings, cost materials and labor and present a quote to a client, that’s a number that very seldom will fluctuate or goes up, at least the client himself add changes to the initial project.  We will tell you the truth of how much money will take to complete your project, and for that reason we usually lose a big percentage of the jobs we quoted.

For every TV shows that shows a renovation or building owner victimized by a crooked contractor, more likely there were more than one straight forward, decent contractor that was not chosen to do that same job at the beginning, because of price.

I am very clear of the fact that every job I start will represents only a liability until the day its completed and I can finally sit, add all the numbers to find out if I managed to spare enough money during the duration of the project to pay my own wages or I was just functioning as a cash machine for a bunch of undeserving people.

In almost every project, the contractor has no choice but to delegate tasks and responsibilities to others, some carry those with care, others do not, in most cases the contractor will cover the cost to fix, replace , reorder, remake till the client gets what he pays in the first place only one time for. Decent contractors will face the responsibility and absorb the cost to undue and fix the mistakes that happen under his watch.

In most occupations as the years goes by and you gain experience and become more knowledgeable the risky  components of that job will lesser and functioning in your job become easier, with time and experience pay also will get better. As a contractor the risks will renew with every project. You start over again and again with every project and pay will not necessary increase with experience.

 Market conditions, ability to get work done in an efficient and timely manner, aptitude to be able to pick and choose clients, trades and employees and even luck will influence how long you are able to handle it and finally prove that you have what it takes to make it not only to the 20 years mark but to the end of every single project you started.

Most of us pay everyone involved long before we are able to collect it back, we assume hard work entitle us to get pay and it becomes devastating when it does not turn that way.

The risk of not being able to collect payment for our work at all or at the proper time to renew the funds that we already paid out and need back to continue operating are more common that we like to admit, and there are plenty of stories to prove it. Contractors are also vulnerable to be rip off by clients or by a bigger company from whom they made the mistake to subcontract work from.

In my personal experience, surviving these days as a contractor is more about what you did not choose to do or got involve with than all those projects that you actually accomplish successfully. The right balance between being able to walk away from potentially problematic situations and keeping busy at the same time will definitely  weight not only in how successful you are but also what price have you paid to get there.

Ceilings Pictures

As a carpenter and builder I have being part of projects with great designs, where every space  have being thought out to accommodate the vision of the client and the type of environment or feeling they wanted to create in every room.

Ceilings are always a good part of those projects and thorough the years I had built so many that I can recall the exact number, but as I always said, ceilings are one on my favorite projects.

Tonight browsing through my pictures, trying to find the right ones to present to clients as suggestions for their project I found pictures and with them memories about passed projects that if

would not be for the pictures I would not remember that easy ....  anymore !
But I do have the pictures.

I remember many years ago when I start taking pictures of my work, I always made emphasis in taking pictures of the process of building, not only of the final product and that have work very well the few occasions  I had to proof to someone that the picture I just emailed  its not a plagiarized picture from a design magazine and it truly is a sample of my work because I have the work progress pictures to prove it


Looking at some pictures now I realize that in some cases I documented the building process and then move to another site and did not have the opportunity to go back and take those finals pictures ...   or as far as I can tell now if  I did I have not run into them for along time.

I have thousands  of pictures of my work in previous projects, so organizing and matching all those pictures can be something I can do once my body can not take the heavy load of this type of physical work anymore, for sure the memories will be a lot more meaningful then.

So, I decided to post some of these pictures, the format of the blog did not allowed me to post them all ( ceiling pictures ) as I would like to do but for sure another day soon I will find an excuse to post another bunch.

Value and Price

“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. 

When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. 

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done.

If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well

to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.” 

― John Ruskin

I “usually” apply this quote to all my personal and business transactions, I try to remember this when I am hiring employees or trades, buying materials and purchasing tools, I found that with time I can’t really remember the times I could overpaid a little bit for something, but I still remember every single time and the consequences of every occasion where at some point I thought I had got a great deal !

I always get a kick out of the employments ads that list all sorts of responsibilities and qualifications and then finish with something like this : “ pay base on experience 12 to 16 dollars “ , ….. 

My fellow employer, who do you think you are kidding ?

First one on line, its yourself, you will be posting that ad again in a week or two looking for someone to come and fix what that person just did. There is a big chance that time and money loses is all you are going to get from employing a person that is willing to work for 16 dollars an hour to perform any type of work that will required some qualifications or abilities on any field of construction these days.

Second one on line, It’s the Client you are working for… believe it or not .. I see it all the time …   people performing tasks they have not proper training for , obviously quality and workmanship will not be parts of that project.  As a dear friend of mine jokes about : the best business to be in three years will be renovations, all the defective work we see around now will be falling apart by then and they gonna need tons of people to fix it.

The third one on that line are us, all the contractors and trade people that feel passionate about the work we do, the ones that try to do it right ! Sometimes, the 16 dollars employers will be chosen over the other guys with decisions based on price and the circle of consequences will repeat itself over and over again.

Vertical Gardens as Interior Scape

We firmly believe that spaces build  for human habitation must incorporate some samples or manifestation of nature and doing so, allow us not only to enjoy nature's beauty but the countless benefits of the cohabitation and living in harmony with nature.

One of the many ways that we can integrate a magnificent  expression of nature into our living spaces is the VERTICAL GARDEN

At the time of planning a design for our building and renovation projects I always give our clients a document under the heading of  " Focal Points For Every Room " , this is nothing more than a sheet of paper with a list of different  things that we could build in every room, things that will turn a normal room formed by four walls, a ceiling and a floor into an unique an exclusive space . It is up to our client to decide if they want it or not and even if they would like to build the necessaries rough ins to add this particular fixture in the future.

One of the suggestions in that list is a VERTICAL GARDEN.

I like Vertical Gardens a lot, I built my first years ago, under my wife's suggestion ( or should I said, pressure ) I did the proper research in materials and procedures but I always had the premonition that our creation  would have a short life and all those colorful plants would never make it to the next summer, Five years later, including two moves, and they are healthier and more beautiful than ever. 

Vertical Gardens are a super nice detail to integrate to any space, residential or commercial, can be customize to any size and shape and it always will brighten the room, but also bring all kind of benefits as a reduction of noise levels,  balancing humidity and of course the most important, making the space peaceful and relaxing.