Eight Questions That Change What You Pay for a Floor

Most flooring surprises aren’t surprises. They’re questions nobody asked before the contract was signed.

These eight follow the estimator through the house. Ask them during the walkthrough. Get the answers on the quote.

How to use these

Two rules.

Put the answers on the quote. The estimator may not be the person who shows up to do the work. If the scope moves, everybody needs the same piece of paper.

Watch the reaction. An experienced crew has heard these questions. They may not love every answer, but they should be able to explain it and write it down.

The questions

1. Can you show me the measured floor area and the waste percentage as two separate lines?

Start here. No industry standard sets the waste percentage for the estimator.

About 10% is normal for an ordinary straight-lay floor. Diagonal, herringbone, or chevron runs 15 to 25%. The residential carpet installation standard has no waste factor. Neither does the laminate association. This is judgment, and it usually arrives buried in one total.

Split the lines and the quote opens up. Do the estimators even agree on the size of your house? Who’s carrying 10% waste and who’s carrying 22%? Neither is automatically wrong. You still need to know which number you’re buying.

2. Does this price include removing and hauling away the floor that is there now?

You’ll probably get a yes. Put it on the quote anyway.

Taking out carpet, laminate, or vinyl and hauling it away is normally inside the installed price in this market. Tile is the exception, at $2 to $3 per square foot on top, because it takes much more work to remove.

Crews don’t all work the same way. If the quote says nothing about tear-out, it’s unresolved. This takes one line to fix.

3. If tile is coming out, is removing the mortar included, and what happens if the slab needs leveling afterward?

Don’t split this question in two.

The tile comes up. The thinset bonded to the slab doesn’t, and partial removal can leave you with only two choices: float the next floor or level the whole slab.

Then comes the money question. If the slab needs leveling after demolition, is that inside this price or is it a change order? Get the answer while the tile is still on the floor.

4. Will you test the slab for moisture, by which method, and what limit does my product's own installation instructions give?

Will they test? Which test? What limit are they using? You need all three answers.

Probes read humidity inside the slab. A calcium chloride kit reads vapor coming off the surface. The results don’t correlate and can’t be converted. Neither test sets the limit either. Your product’s installation instructions do, often based on the adhesive.

Don’t accept a generic chart. Get the reading and the product limit in writing.

5. What is included for transitions, thresholds, and baseboard, and are those priced in linear feet?

Trim is where the units change and quotes get muddy.

Transitions, thresholds, reducers, quarter round, baseboard off and back on, or baseboard replaced. Which of those are included? Which are priced in linear feet? Make the quote say it.

Painted baseboard in a pre-1978 house also runs straight into question eight.

6. Who moves the furniture, who disconnects and reconnects the appliances, and who pulls and resets the toilet?

Furniture moving is all over the place. Appliance work isn’t priced in any published source we found, so missing doesn’t mean included.

Name the refrigerator, washer, dryer, and toilet if you’re flooring a bathroom. Then ask the question that matters after everything goes back. Who’s responsible if something leaks?

7. How are the stairs priced, and is that per step?

Stairs are almost always per step. That makes them invisible in a square-foot total and turns them into one of the biggest surprises on the quote.

For national orientation, carpet replacement on stairs runs roughly $22 to $65 or more per step. National hardwood runs roughly $100 to $300 per step. Multiply by the actual flight. It won’t round off.

Watch the label. Much lower stair figures are usually install-only, which is the wrong line if old carpet has to come off first.

8. My house was built before 1980. How does your crew handle the old flooring, the mastic, and the painted baseboards?

This is really three questions. A crew that works in older San Antonio houses should know where each one goes.

The flooring and the mastic. In a building constructed no later than 1980, a paid crew has to presume the resilient flooring, mastic, and backing contain asbestos. Sheet flooring can’t be ripped up. It has to be cut with the cut point wetted and kept wet. Tile has to come up intact unless intact removal can be shown to be impossible. Ask whether the old floor can be covered instead. That’s the federal consumer agency’s first recommendation.

The painted baseboards. In a pre-1978 house, prying off painted baseboard very likely triggers the federal lead renovation rule. The entire surface area of the removed painted component counts, and one bedroom’s worth clears the threshold by itself. Undercutting instead of removing is the one common approach that reliably stays under.

What happens if they find mold. At or above twenty-five contiguous square feet, Texas requires the contractor to stop, contain it, and tell you a licensed or registered person has to take over. Ask what that handoff looks like before work starts.

The credential question, which is not on the list for a reason

You’ll be told to hire a licensed flooring contractor. In Texas you can’t, because the state doesn’t license flooring work. No flooring license, floor covering license, tile or carpet license, or state residential general contractor or home improvement license.

Ask the version that has a verifiable answer: which license, from which agency, and what is the number.

Licensed can honestly mean an out-of-state license, an asbestos license from the state health department, federal lead certification, an affiliated company’s electrical or plumbing license, a manufacturer certification, or a sales tax permit. Any of those may be real. None is a Texas flooring license. Once you have the agency and number, look it up.

The trades a flooring job can pull in are genuinely licensed and genuinely checkable: electrical and HVAC through the state licensing agency, plumbing through the state plumbing board, mold assessment and remediation through the state licensing agency, and asbestos work through the state health department.

The city does run a Home Improvement Contractor registration, and a contractor who pulls permits must have it. But flooring needs no permit here, so its absence on a flooring job proves nothing. Neither does absence from the city's contractor directory, which is a tiered program contractors pay to join.

Before you sign

Four checks. Then sign.

• Every line carries its unit. Square feet, linear feet, or per step.
• Measured area and waste percentage appear separately, not blended into a total.
• Every add-on above is either priced or explicitly excluded in writing. An add-on that is simply absent is unresolved, not included.
• The leveling question has a named owner if tile is coming out.

One more line for insurance. Texas doesn’t require a flooring contractor to carry it. Ask for a certificate of liability insurance from the insurer, not a sentence on a website, and make sure the name matches the contract.