Updates

By Mario Vilchis, owner, Vilchis Hardwood Floors. Working in Durham since 2009. A lot of the oldest houses in Trinity Park and Old North Durham have pine floors instead of the oak you find in the 1920s bungalows a few streets over. When the boards are reddish brown with tight, dark growth rings, that’s usually … Restoring Original Heart Pine Floors in Trinity Park and Old North Durham: Save, Patch or Replace?

By Mario Vilchis, owner of Vilchis Hardwood Floors & Tile. Updated October 2026. Somewhere in the middle of planning a kitchen remodel, the cabinet installer asks for a date and somebody has to decide whether the floor goes down before the cabinets or after. I’ve run a flooring company in Durham since 2009, and I measure every … Cabinets first or floors first? How we sequence flooring in a Durham kitchen remodel

By Mario Vilchis, owner of Vilchis Hardwood Floors & Tile. Updated October 2026. Here’s a call we get from south Durham. Someone in a house built in the 1980s or ’90s, say in Woodcroft, has decided the carpet is done. They pull up a corner in a closet hoping to see oak, or at least … Particleboard Under the Carpet: Why 1980s-90s Durham Homes Like Woodcroft Need New Underlayment Before Hardwood

By Mario Vilchis, owner and CEO of Vilchis Hardwood Floors & Tile 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 … Since 2009 in Durham: How Our Family-Owned Flooring Company Built Its Business One House at a Time

I’m Mario Vilchis, and I run the crew at Vilchis Hardwood Floors. Every so often we pull up an old floor in a Cary house and the wood underneath isn’t solid anymore. Sometimes it’s a rotted subfloor from a leak nobody knew about, sometimes it’s termites, and now and then it’s both. Whichever it is, … Termite Damage or Rotted Subfloor Under the Old Floor: What Happens Next

I’m Mario Vilchis, and I run the crew at Vilchis Hardwood Floors. A lot of the calls we get from Cary start with the same question, usually before anyone has picked a floor or asked about price: is there hardwood under this carpet? When the answer is yes, it’s the best news of the whole … Is There Hardwood Under My Carpet? How to Check, and What We Usually Find in Cary Homes

I’m Mario Vilchis, and I run the crew at Vilchis Hardwood Floors. One of the most common jobs we do in Cary is the second floor of a two-story house. The builder put wood downstairs and carpet everywhere else, and now the owners want hardwood or vinyl plank in the upstairs hall, the bedrooms, or … Squeaky Floors Upstairs: Fixing Subfloor Noise Before the New Floor Goes Down

Tile goes in any bathroom with a tiled shower, and in an upstairs bath where an overflowing toilet would end up in the ceiling below. Luxury vinyl plank (LVP) makes more sense in a powder room, a rental, or a hall bath that mostly sees splashes from the sink. It’s common for one house to … Tile vs. Luxury Vinyl in a Bathroom Remodel: Which We Put in Which Bathroom

Almost every flooring company in the Triangle puts “licensed and insured” on its truck, its website, and its business card. We do too. Here’s the part nobody tells homeowners: in North Carolina, for most residential flooring jobs, that phrase is close to meaningless as a legal claim. There is no flooring license in this state. … Licensed and insured in North Carolina: what a flooring contractor should be able to hand you in 10 minutes

We get asked some version of “how do I know you’re any good” maybe twice a month, usually by someone who already got burned once. It’s a fair question and most companies answer it badly, with a line about quality and craftsmanship that tells you nothing. So here’s the version we’d actually use. These are … How to vet a flooring company in Durham, NC: the 12 questions we’d ask if we were hiring us