I started laying and refinishing wood floors in Durham in 2009. A lot has changed since then, but not the part people usually ask me about. There’s still one crew. I still come out to measure every job myself, and the people who put your floor down are the same people who’ve been working with me for years.
Most of what we know, we learned one house at a time. Usually that meant pulling up an old floor and finding out what somebody did to it during a bathroom remodel in 1974. This is how a small family shop on Obie Drive got to where it is, and why we still run it the way we do. If you’re comparing flooring companies in Durham, NC and want to know who would actually be in your house, consider this the long answer.
One crew, and the owner does the measuring
There’s a common way to run a flooring company. A salesperson measures, somebody in an office writes up the order, and a crew you’ve never met shows up on install day. Sometimes that crew is a subcontractor who got the work order the night before. I’ve been called in to fix enough of those jobs to know where they go wrong: the person who measured never looked under the carpet, and the person installing finds out what’s down there at 8 a.m.
We never set it up that way. I do the measuring and the inspection in the same visit, and I’m on the job while the floor goes down. We don’t subcontract anything. Our crew gets paid for the job, not by the square foot, so if a subfloor needs an extra half day of flattening, nobody has to argue about it. (I wrote more about how that compares to a store-installed floor in big-box installation vs. a local Durham crew.)
You get a written, fixed price before we start, not a ballpark over the phone. If we get into the job and find something I should have caught on the estimate, I eat that cost. If it’s something nobody could have seen, like rot hiding under an old floor, we stop, take pictures and call you with a number before we touch anything else. On one whole-house job in Durham that call took nine minutes, and the homeowner wasn’t surprised by anything on the final bill. The whole job, day by day, is in our 10-day job log.
When the floor is finished, our cleaning crew can come through behind us. Sawdust ends up in places you wouldn’t expect, and most people would rather not spend the week after a renovation finding it.
What Durham’s houses taught us
Durham doesn’t have one kind of house, and a lot of what we know came from the ones that gave us trouble.
In Trinity Park, Watts-Hillandale, Forest Hills and Old North Durham, most houses went up somewhere between the 1910s and the 1950s. Open Durham’s history of Trinity Park is a good read if you live in one and want to know where it came from. Nearly all of these houses still have original hardwood somewhere, often under carpet or old linoleum. Under that you’ll usually find 1×6 pine subfloor laid on a diagonal, held down with cut nails that have been working loose for about eighty years. Joists sag toward the middle of the span. Bathrooms got added in the ’60s over framing that was never sized for a cast iron tub. We find something under the old floor more often than not, so we plan time for it before we ever give you a schedule. If you own one of these, what we find under 1940s Durham bungalows goes through it in detail.
The newer subdivisions taught us something different. Out toward Southpoint, Hope Valley Farms and the developments off Fayetteville Road, a lot of first floors sit on concrete slab. Concrete holds moisture and lets it out slowly for years, and our clay soil doesn’t help. We’ve pulled up cupped solid oak that another crew nailed over a slab nobody tested. So now we test every slab. On one 2018 build near RTP the reading came back high enough that we threw out the original plan and worked out a different one with the homeowner. There’s more on that in installing hardwood over slab in Durham’s newer subdivisions.
Then there’s the weather, which every Durham floor has to live with. Summers here are muggy, and once the heat comes on in winter the air dries right out. Wood swells and shrinks with that. We’ve watched floors around the Triangle go through more than sixteen summers now, which is why we take moisture readings on the subfloor and on the wood before a single board goes down, and why the material sits in your house to acclimate first.
Where the work comes from
A lot of our work comes from people who’ve hired us before, or from someone who heard about us from a neighbor. Builders send us work too. Oak Village Builders wrote in a Google review that they’ve used us for more than fifteen years. Another homeowner wrote that a local builder recommended us. That’s the kind of referral that costs somebody something to give, because their name is on it.
That’s what I mean by one house at a time. One job goes well, the owner tells somebody, and a year later we’re measuring the house down the street. It’s also why we care about the things that never make it into a photo: whether the final bill matched the quote, whether the crew cleaned up every night, and whether the floor still sits flat after its first summer. Those are the things people bring up in reviews, good or bad.
We also do a fair amount of work for landlords and property managers around Durham, and for homeowners whose HOA wants paperwork before work starts. We carry general liability and workers’ comp on every crew member, and we’ll send the certificates straight to whoever asks for them.
What we install now, and what changed
We started with wood floors, and hardwood installation and refinishing is still a big part of the week. We added laminate in 2010. Tile is part of the business too, which is why it’s in our name, and today we do tile installation on floors, showers and backsplashes, plus the large-format wall and floor panels you’ll see in our project gallery.
The floor we put down most these days is luxury vinyl plank. It’s waterproof, it takes a beating from kids and dogs, and from across the room most people can’t tell it from wood. We also do epoxy floors and coatings for garages and basements. We’ve gone back to garage floors we did six and seven years ago, and they still look like the day we left.
What hasn’t changed is how we talk to people about all of it. If the floor you already have only needs a refinish, we’ll say so. We talk homeowners out of new hardwood pretty much every month when vinyl fits the way they live better. And if the crawlspace under your house needs fixing before any floor goes on top, you’ll hear that from us before you hear a price.
Where we work
The shop is at 237 Obie Dr in Durham, and most of our jobs are within a 30-minute drive of it. Here at home that means Trinity Park, Hope Valley, Forest Hills, Hillandale, Woodcroft, Southpoint and everything in between. We’re in Raleigh a lot, about 25 minutes up I-40, and we work regularly in Cary, Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Wake Forest. We also take jobs in Hillsborough, Apex, Morrisville and Garner.
It’s the same crew in every one of those towns. People in Hope Valley have asked whether our Raleigh jobs get the B team. People in Five Points have asked whether a “Durham company” really works in Raleigh at all. There’s one crew, so the answer to both is the same.
Questions people ask about us
How long has Vilchis Hardwood Floors & Tile been in business?
Since 2009. Mario Vilchis started laying and refinishing wood floors in Durham that year, and the company has worked across the Triangle ever since.
Where is your shop?
237 Obie Dr, Durham, NC 27713. The office is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Who comes out to give the estimate?
Mario does, in person. The estimate is free. We measure, look at the subfloor and whatever is down now, and email you a written, fixed-price quote, usually within a day or two.
Do you use subcontractors?
No. The crew that installs your floor is our own crew, and Mario is on the job.
Are you insured?
Yes. We carry general liability and workers’ comp on every crew member and can send certificates to your HOA, builder or property manager.
What kinds of floors do you install?
Solid and engineered hardwood, refinishing, laminate, luxury vinyl plank, tile, epoxy and floor coatings. Our cleaning crew can also come in after the install.
Which areas do you serve?
Durham and the surrounding Triangle, including Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Wake Forest, Hillsborough, Apex, Morrisville and Garner. If you’re within driving distance of the shop and don’t see your town, call and ask.
How do I check out a flooring company before I hire one?
Ask who will be on site on day three, whether they subcontract, and for insurance certificates rather than a promise. We put together 12 questions to ask a Durham flooring company, and they apply to us as much as anyone.
Visit or call
Vilchis Hardwood Floors & Tile
237 Obie Dr, Durham, NC 27713
(919) 794-1116
[email protected]
Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
If your house is within driving distance of the shop, request a free in-home estimate or give us a call, and I’ll come take a look.
About the author
Mario Vilchis is the owner and CEO of Vilchis Hardwood Floors & Tile, a family-run flooring company in Durham, NC. He has installed and refinished floors across the Triangle since 2009, measures every job himself and runs the crew that installs it. More about the company.
