Flooring Installation & Repair in Brooklyn

Nothing in a prewar building is level

Lay a four-foot level anywhere in a hundred-year-old Brooklyn apartment and you'll find a slope. Sometimes an inch across a room. That's normal for the age and usually not a structural problem — but it does mean a floating floor will rock, click-lock joints will separate, and tile will crack along the grout line.

So the first thing we do is map the floor and decide what it needs: self-leveling compound, shimming, or in some cases just an honest conversation about which material tolerates the movement best. Skipping this step is the single most common reason a new floor fails within two years.

Picking the right material for the building

Solid hardwood is beautiful and it moves with humidity, which matters a lot in a steam-heated apartment that swings from damp to desert every October. Engineered wood handles that better. Vinyl plank handles water, which is why it belongs in a basement or below a bathroom.

Many co-ops and condos also require a minimum sound rating on underlayment, and some ban hard floors outright above certain units. Check your alteration agreement before you buy anything — we'd rather flag it than install a floor your board makes you pull up.

What's under the carpet

Frequently, original hardwood in better shape than you'd expect. Before you buy new flooring, pull up a corner in a closet and look. We've saved people the entire cost of an install more than once by finding a floor that only needed refinishing.