Flooring Reviews

Half my mornings used to start with a couch, two recliners, and a dog the size of a deer standing on the floor I was to tear out. The appointment messages handle it now. Folks get reminded to clear the room and gate the dog before we come. A lady told me she almost hired the other bid, then got our reminder the night before the measure and said, well, at least these people have done this before. Room was empty when I got there too. First time in months I started sanding before nine.

Wood flooring will teach a man humility. Years back I put down four hundred feet of white oak in a farmhouse for a couple who had waited all summer, and they wanted it in the week the wood arrived because their daughter was coming home. I knew better. I let them talk me into it anyway, and by January there were gaps you could lose a dime in. They did not blame the house or the weather or the wood. They blamed me, and honestly they had a right to, I am the one who is supposed to know. Our website now has our real floors in real houses around here, and it says in plain words that the wood sits in your house a week or more before a board gets nailed, and why. A woman in the next town over called this spring and told me she picked us off that page. She said the other companies showed her shiny pictures and she picked the one that explained why her floor would not be rushed. Her oak sat nine days. I checked it with the meter in front of her and she took a picture of the reading like it was a grandbaby. My lead man says I have gotten downright pleasant since I stopped arguing people into ruining their own floors. He might be right.

My brother Darnell and I own this store together, which means he installs and I sell. He took it over from our dad as the installer, I came home from the big city to run the showroom, and for a long time our customers were whoever walked in off the street holding a sample from a big store, wanting to know if we would match the price and warranty it besides. Launchbarr started posting our finished jobs, the living rooms, with the towns named. A realtor here in town began sending her sellers to us before listings go on the market, three of them this year. One of those sellers told me she chose the same walnut her neighbor two streets over had, she had stood on it at a cookout. Darnell says a cookout sells more floor than I ever did standing in this showroom. He is wrong, but not by enough that I can afford to argue.

My wife Betsy owns this company. I want that clear up front, because half the town assumes it is mine since I am the one with the tape measure. She built it, she runs it, and I came to work for her six years ago after my knees gave out framing. Callbacks used to own our Fridays. A floor would cup or a seam would peak and Betsy would spend the day that was supposed to be a paying install driving out to look at a problem for free, then come home sorrier than when she left. The review asks changed the kind of proof we have out there. A customer last fall wrote a review that still makes Betsy laugh. She said we talked her out of installing her floor the week she wanted, meter tested it, made her wait, and she was mad for six days and grateful ever since. That review has sold more flooring than any flyer we ever mailed, because it is the argument Betsy used to have in person, now in a customer's words where everybody can read it before she gets there. Our installer Roy retired in June. At his little party he looked at Betsy and said people call already trusting the meter now. Then he said, "Boss, we used to beg folks to believe us." She cried a little. Do not tell her I said that part.

I spend my days on my knees with a nail gun, and my phone spends its days in the truck cab cooking in the sun. For years that worked because most of my jobs came from two builders. Then one retired and the other went with his nephew, and I learned how many calls I had been missing, one voicemail at a time. My wife used to read them out at supper like a weather report. Hang up, hang up, one lady who left her number twice because she was not sure it took. Launchbarr gave us a voice that answers when I cannot, and she is patient in a way I am not at four in the afternoon with glue on my hands. She asks what room, what is down now, and she books the measure. A customer told me at her own kitchen table, I almost did not call back, but your girl was so kind I stayed on the line. I did not correct her. My lead man says the phone works for the man on his knees now instead of against him. He is not wrong.

I am not in the flooring business. I am married to it. Greg comes home with sawdust in his eyebrows and strong opinions about subfloors. What I follow is the reviews. Since Launchbarr started asking every customer for one when the job is done, people write whole paragraphs. One lady wrote that Greg talked her out of the cheap plank she picked and made her wait a week while her wood sat in the house, and she was grateful. Greg read that three times out loud. He said, she is telling the next hundred customers what I used to say in every living room.

My partner lays the floors, I run the money, and deposits used to be a handshake and a hope. Now the deposit goes out as a link with the estimate, and no wood gets ordered until it lands. One customer paid from her couch at nine at night. I sleep better than I did on handshakes.

I have laid floors for twenty two years and my Google listing had a photo of somebody else's floor and a phone number from two phones ago. Launchbarr fixed the listing, put up our real work, and listed the moisture testing, the hardwood, the laminate, and the stairs. Now folks call saying they found us on the map. A man told me he picked us because our photos were actual houses, not a showroom. I told him the showroom is my truck.

My dad has run this floor shop since I was in a booster seat, and his filing system is a metal cabinet and a memory that is slowly rusting. When I came home to work for him I found estimate sheets going back nine years, people who asked about a floor and never called back. We sent that old list one short message through Launchbarr, no pitch, just asking if the floor ever got done. Four booked measures the first week. One man said he had been stepping over the same cracked vinyl since the year I graduated. Dad stood looking at that cabinet a long time. He said, I treated it like a junk drawer for thirty years and it was a savings account.

I run the office, which in a flooring company means I know where every crew is supposed to be and why they are not there yet. The reminder messages changed my mornings. The day before an install, customers get a text about moving furniture, gating the dog, and the baseboards coming off. Our crews walk into empty rooms now. One lady had coffee waiting for the installers because, she said, the reminder made her feel looked after. I used to make those calls myself, one at a time, all morning long.

I was under a house checking a subfloor when the phone buzzed twice and quit. Old days, that is a job gone to the next name on the list. The text back went out on its own and the man answered it from his porch. He booked the measure while I was crawling out. Floors are won by whoever answers first. I finally answer first.

I am particular about floors in a way that makes me hard to work for and, I am told, hard to be married to. My old website was not particular at all. Stock photos of perfect rooms, not one of them mine, and a paragraph about excellence that could have belonged to a car wash. Launchbarr rebuilt it with our real work, stair treads I laid myself, and a page that says plainly we test moisture, we let wood sit, and we do not apologize for either one. A couple came in last month holding screenshots of my own site, asking for the floor in the third picture. They have it now. My wife says the website is the first employee I have ever had who is as picky as I am.

Laura owns this company. I want that straight before anything else, because I am the one holding the tape measure and people assume. I run her install crew, which makes me an employee with opinions. The board settled our supper arguments. Every lead and every job sits on one board now, who measured it, what the moisture read, when the wood lands, who is waiting on a callback. Laura checks it from the office. I check it from the job site. A customer asked me last week when his install started and I answered off my phone instead of calling her. Laura said that alone paid for the month.

I write a good estimate and then I used to let it die politely. I would measure a whole house, price it fair, shake a hand, and never follow up, because calling twice felt like begging and I am too proud for begging. Launchbarr follows up on the quiet ones now, a few spaced messages, easy tone, standing invitation. A lady answered three weeks later saying her husband's bonus had landed and to come do the great room. She signed that same day. Total begging on my part, zero.

My brother lays the floors, I handle everything with a keyboard. We put a code on the truck and the invoice that goes straight to our reviews and booking. A neighbor scanned it off the truck while we worked across the street and booked a measure from her driveway. My brother calls it a sticker. The sticker outworks him some weeks.

January used to be my dead month. The phone would go quiet right after the holidays and I would spend three weeks reorganizing the warehouse and pretending that was a business strategy. This January, Launchbarr sent one plain note to everybody we have ever floored for, asking how the floors were treating them and mentioning we had room on the schedule before spring got busy. Eleven people answered. Eleven. A lady whose kitchen we did four years ago booked her whole upstairs. A man said his daughter had just bought a house two towns away and gave her our name before he even answered the message. I have been in this trade thirty one years and I thought winter work came from luck and weather. Turns out it was sitting in my own customer list the whole time, waiting for somebody to write to it. My bookkeeper asked what changed. I told her we finally introduced ourselves to the people who already know us.

Stan has answered his own phone for thirty years, weekends and holidays and one memorable Christmas morning, which means I have eaten a lot of suppers next to a man discussing subfloors. The calls get answered now even on a Saturday, kindly, with the details taken down and waiting on his board Monday. A lady with a buckled floor from a leak told me she cried a little when somebody answered, because water does not wait for business hours. Stan ate a whole meal hot that weekend. From the wife's chair, that is the whole review.

I lead the crew, and my mornings used to start by moving somebody's couch with my boots on. Now the night before a job, the customer gets a message about clearing the room and gating the dog. Tuesday the room stood empty and we were laying plank by eight. I told the boss the messages move furniture better than half the helpers I have trained.

I sell a lot of whole house jobs to people who need the floor and cannot write one check for it, teachers and young families and one memorable set of parents of triplets. I used to watch those estimates die at the kitchen table over the total. Now we offer the job in payments, billed regular, and the customer signs right there on her phone while the total still feels human. A young mother told me the payments were the difference between the floor her kids crawl on being safe this year or someday. My installer says I went soft. I told him soft is a lady signing instead of crying.

My nephew set me up with the texting and I will be honest, I expected a robot to embarrass me. What happens is a customer writes to the website at whatever hour, the system asks what room, what is down now, whether the dog bites, and books the measure with the answers attached. I read them over coffee. A man told me at his door, whoever I was texting with knew more about my house than I did. I just nodded like it was me at midnight, wide awake and typing.

My cousin installs, I run the office and the money, and for two years I bought leads that got sold to four other floor shops the same morning. I quit all of it. The ads Launchbarr runs now bring people from our own side of the county looking for whole house work, not one closet. Last month a lady told me she clicked because the ad showed a floor that looked like her grandmother's house redone. She signed for the whole first floor. My cousin asked if the ad could also find him a helper. I told him one miracle at a time.

I have owned this shop nineteen years and never once heard what my customers say before I walk into their house. The office girl would write down a name and a number and that was the whole story. Now I can see which ad or which page brought a call, and I can hear the call itself. Caller after caller asks the same question: are you the kind that makes us wait for the wood, or the fast kind. My son heard me listening in the truck and said I finally took a marketing meeting. I told him I took it at lunch, with my own customers teaching. Best school I ever attended, and nobody charged tuition.

Dad can lay a floor you could eat off and cannot post a picture to save his life. Every photo he takes has his thumb in it. Launchbarr posts our finished jobs now, the before with the stained carpet and the after with the new oak, and the neighbors do the rest. A woman down the road booked a measure and told Dad she had watched her neighbor's floor go in post by post like a television show. Dad asked what channel we are on. I told him ours.

I came home from college to help my mom in the office for one summer, and I am in year three. The review asks are my favorite part of this system. When a job finishes, the ask goes out while the customer is still standing barefoot on the new floor, happy. One review described my mom making the crew redo a transition strip nobody else could even see. Mom read it twice and said, that woman noticed the strip. She has been walking taller all week.