By Mario Vilchis, owner, Vilchis Hardwood Floors. Working in Durham since 2009.
If your house is in Trinity Park, Watts-Hillandale, Forest Hills, Old North Durham, or anywhere else with a pre-1960 bungalow on a crawl space, this one is for you. The short version: the original oak you’re standing on is probably fine. What’s underneath it is the part that surprises people.
I’ve spent the last sixteen years pulling up hardwood in Durham houses. Some of what we find is normal. Some of it is the reason your floor squeaks in the same spot every time the dishwasher runs. None of it is the kind of thing a contractor wants to talk about over the phone, which is why I never quote a hardwood job without coming out to look first.
This is the post I wish I could send to every homeowner before they sign with the cheapest bidder.
Why the subfloor matters more than the wood
Hardwood installation looks simple from the outside. Boards go down, get nailed, get sanded, get finished. The truth is the boards are the easy part. If the layer underneath them isn’t flat, isn’t dry, and isn’t structurally sound, the floor you paid for will start telling on whoever installed it within six to twelve months.
In a Durham bungalow, the layer underneath is usually a mix of original 1×6 pine subfloor laid diagonally across the joists. Sometimes there’s a sheet of plywood overlaid on top from a 1980s remodel. Sometimes there isn’t. The joists themselves are full-dimension 2×8s or 2×10s spaced 16 inches on center, and they often have notches cut into them for plumbing or HVAC that wouldn’t pass code today.
You can’t tell any of that from the surface. We find out by lifting boards. So before I write a number on a quote, that’s what I do.
The five things we run into most
Rotted plank ends near the bathroom wall come up first because they come up in almost every old bungalow. If your house still has its original layout, the bathroom is probably tucked off the back hallway, and the toilet has been quietly leaking around the wax ring for longer than anyone realized. The wood under the threshold and a foot or two into the hallway gets soft. You won’t notice it until someone steps on a spongy spot. We cut out the soft section back to solid material, sister the joist if it’s compromised, and patch in new subfloor with construction adhesive and screws. On a bungalow-sized bathroom edge, that’s usually $250 to $600. If the joist itself has to come out, double it.
The mystery plywood patch is the second one. Whoever owned the house in 1992 ran a phone line, or moved a heat register, or replaced a kitchen, and they left behind a square of plywood that doesn’t sit at the same height as the original subfloor. Sometimes it’s 1/4 inch low. Sometimes it’s 3/8 inch high. Either way you can’t lay hardwood across it without the new floor telegraphing the seam. The fix is shimming the low spots with thin plywood strips, planing the high spots, or pulling the patch entirely and replacing it at the right height. Around $150 to $400 for a patch the size of a dishwasher. More if it runs the length of a kitchen.
Notched joists from old HVAC and plumbing runs are the one I worry about most because they’re structural. Plumbers and HVAC guys in the 50s and 60s would cut a notch right through the bottom of a joist to run a copper line or a duct. By 2026 some of those joists are sagging in a way you can feel when you walk across the floor. We sister the affected joist with a new piece of dimensional lumber, glued and bolted alongside the original. On a single joist that’s $200 to $450 plus the cost of getting into the crawl space. On three or four joists it climbs past $1,000 fast. I will not put a new floor on top of a sagging joist. I’ll tell you that on day one.
Asbestos tile under carpet, or under linoleum, or under both, shows up in plenty of Durham houses. There was a lot of 9×9 vinyl-asbestos tile installed in kitchens and back hallways between the late 40s and the early 70s. Then somebody put carpet over it. Then somebody put a different carpet over that one. We pull up the carpet for a hardwood install, and there it is. I am not licensed to remove asbestos. Nobody in flooring should be. If we find it, we stop, the work stops, and you call a licensed abatement contractor. In Durham that’s usually $1,200 to $3,000 for a kitchen-sized area. The cost stings, but the alternative is sanding it later and putting fibers into your house’s air, which is not a thing I am willing to do.
The fifth one is diagonal pine that isn’t flat anymore. The original 1×6 subfloor in a 1940s house was nailed down with cut nails that have been working their way loose for eighty years. The boards have cupped slightly. Some have cracked. The whole surface has hills and valleys you can feel with your hand. For new hardwood to lie flat on top of it, we either screw it back down board by board (cheap, slow, the right call about half the time), or we overlay a 1/2-inch plywood layer across the whole room and start from there (more expensive, faster, sometimes the only option). On a 250 square foot living room you’re looking at $400 to $1,200 depending on which approach the floor needs.
What this means when you get a quote
If a contractor gives you a hardwood number over the phone for a house built before 1960, they are guessing. They will either eat the difference when they find one of the things I just listed (most won’t, which is how the relationship sours), or they will hit you with a change order halfway through the job. A good Durham flooring company will say “I need to come look first.” They aren’t stalling. They’re being honest.
When we come out, we lift a board in an inconspicuous spot and look. It takes ten minutes. Then I write you a quote that includes whatever the subfloor needs, line by line, with prices attached. If we get into the job and find something I missed, I eat that cost. That’s the whole point of a written fixed-price quote.
The crawl space is half of this
Most of the subfloor problems I described are made worse by what’s happening four feet below them. If your crawl space is wet, your subfloor keeps getting damaged no matter how good the install on top is. Advanced Energy, a non-profit out of Raleigh, did a long-running field study showing closed (encapsulated) crawl spaces stayed below 60% relative humidity in the summer, while traditional vented ones ran above 70%. The work was substantial enough that it actually changed parts of the NC residential code.
I’m not a crawl space contractor. I won’t sell you one. But if your bungalow has a vented crawl with exposed dirt and standing water in May, no hardwood floor we install on top is going to last as long as it should. I’ll tell you that before we start.
What we actually do
We do hardwood installation, refinishing existing floors, and board-by-board repair work. Mario is on every job. We use Bostitch nailers and pull moisture readings on both the subfloor and the wood before a single board goes down. If the subfloor needs work first, we either do it ourselves or tell you who to call.
If hardwood ends up being more than your budget can handle once the subfloor work is added in, we’ll talk you through the alternatives. Luxury vinyl plank handles a slightly imperfect subfloor better than hardwood does. Laminate is even more forgiving. Neither one looks the same as a refinished oak floor in a Trinity Park bungalow, but if the choice is between cutting corners on hardwood and doing a different floor right, the different floor wins.
How to know what your house actually needs
Call us at (919) 794-1116 or ask for a free in-home estimate. I’ll come out, lift a board where it won’t matter, and tell you what we find. The estimate is free. The conversation is honest. Whatever happens next is up to you.
If you’ve already got a refinishing or repair job in mind for an existing floor, we can scope that on the same visit. Same goes for tile work in the kitchen or bath if a bigger remodel is on the table.
Plenty of Durham bungalows have surprisingly clean subfloors. Some don’t. You just need to know which one yours is before anyone starts nailing.
Mario Vilchis runs Vilchis Hardwood Floors out of 237 Obie Dr in Durham. He’s been installing and refinishing wood floors in the Triangle since 2009 and shows up to every estimate himself. Reach the shop at (919) 794-1116.
