Hardwood Flooring Installation
Almost every home in this region sits on a concrete slab, and that one fact decides which hardwood you can actually install. Get the moisture question right and the floor outlives the mortgage.
- Houston metro
- Written scope before work begins
- Licensed trade subs where required
- Free estimate
Overview
Hardwood Flooring Installation
Two things carry hardwood: a wood subfloor you can nail into, or a slab you glue to. Most homes across the Houston metro are slab-on-grade, which rules out traditional solid three-quarter-inch nail-down unless you build a plywood subfloor over the concrete first. That build-up raises the finished floor an inch or more and pulls doors, thresholds, cabinet toe-kicks and stair risers into the job. Engineered plank glued directly to the slab avoids all of it.
Concrete never fully stops giving off moisture, especially on slabs poured without a vapor retarder underneath. Wood reacts to that vapor by swelling. Before anyone opens a box, the slab should be tested — relative humidity probes drilled into the concrete per ASTM F2170 are the standard, and the adhesive you choose has to be rated for the number that comes back. The wood gets metered too: it should land within a couple of points of where the room will actually live.
After that, the choices are about how the floor ages. Wider planks move more across the grain, so a seven-inch board telegraphs a humidity swing that a three-inch board hides. Prefinished boards arrive with a factory finish and a small bevel at each edge. Site-finished floors are sanded flat and coated in place, which looks seamless but puts the house out of service for several days and needs the dust plan settled up front.
The things that actually decide this job
Construction type decides everything
Solid hardwood is one piece of wood and moves as one piece. Engineered stacks a real wood wear layer over cross-laid plies that fight that movement. Over a slab in a humid climate, engineered glued down is the stable answer, and solid only works over a subfloor you build. Ask which one a quote is priced on — the two are not interchangeable at the same number.
Test the slab, then pick the adhesive
Slab moisture is measured, not eyeballed. In-slab relative humidity testing gives you a percentage; the adhesive data sheet gives you a ceiling. Many urethane wood adhesives double as a moisture barrier up to roughly 90 to 95 percent RH when troweled at the specified rate, and above that you add a separate barrier or a mitigation coat. Skipping the test is how a floor cups three months in.
Flatness comes before beauty
Glue-down and floating hardwood both want a slab flat to about three-sixteenths of an inch over ten feet. Real slabs here rarely arrive that way, and soil movement makes some of them worse over time. Grinding high spots and filling lows with cementitious leveler is normal, billable work. It should appear on the estimate, not surface as a change order on install day.
Wear layer sets how many lives the floor gets
On engineered plank, only the top layer can ever be sanded. A two-millimeter wear layer takes one careful screen-and-recoat, maybe one very light sanding. Four to six millimeters behaves close to solid and can be refinished two or three times, which matters if you plan to stay twenty years or you have large dogs. Compare wear layers, not overall plank thickness.
Practical considerations
Humidity control is part of the installation
Wood wants an indoor relative humidity band, usually 35 to 55 percent, and most manufacturer warranties say so in writing. Installing into a vacant house with the air conditioning switched off in August, or leaving it off afterward, is the fastest way to void one. If the property is empty, the HVAC runs during acclimation, installation and the weeks after, or the schedule moves.
Refinishing beats replacing more often than people expect
If what you have is solid wood in sound condition, sanding and recoating costs less than a tear-out and keeps the original boards. The limits are honest ones: you can’t sand out deep water staining, you can’t change plank width, and every floor has a finite number of sandings left in it. Pulling one floor vent cover shows the board thickness and answers most of the question.
A floor that is out of level may not be a flooring problem
The expansive clay under this region swells in wet weather and shrinks in drought, and slabs ride that movement. Doors that stick, cracks that open and close with the seasons, and floors that slope are foundation symptoms. New hardwood laid over active movement will tell the same story within a year or two, so the movement gets diagnosed before anyone orders material.
Permit authority follows the address
A like-for-like floor covering swap normally needs no permit at all. The moment the work includes structural subfloor repair, moving a wall or altering a stair, it does — and which office issues that permit depends on whether the address sits inside a city, in unincorporated county land, or in a township. Confirm the authority before demolition starts, not after.
At a glance
| Hardwood option | Over a slab | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Solid 3/4 in. nail-down | Only over a plywood subfloor built on top | Adds an inch or more of height; doors and thresholds get reworked |
| Engineered, glued direct | Yes, with a moisture-rated urethane adhesive | Slab flatness and prep drive most of the cost variance |
| Engineered, floating click | Yes, over a vapor retarder and pad | Slightly hollow underfoot; needs an expansion gap at every wall |
| Thin-sawn engineered, 2 mm wear layer | Yes | One light refinish at most over the life of the floor |
| Thick-sawn engineered, 4 to 6 mm | Yes | Costs more; sands two or three times like solid wood |
| Existing floor, sanded and refinished | Already installed | Cheapest path, but you keep the current width, species and layout |
Common questions
Can I really put wood over a concrete slab?
Yes, and most hardwood in this region goes down that way. Engineered plank is glued directly to the slab with a urethane adhesive, or floated over a vapor retarder and pad. Solid three-quarter-inch wood is the one that can’t be nailed or glued to bare concrete; it needs a plywood subfloor fastened over the slab first, and that raises the finished height. The gate on either method is the slab moisture reading and how flat the concrete is. Both are measurable before a single box is ordered.
Why does my wood floor gap in winter and cup in summer?
That is wood doing what wood does. Boards lose width when indoor air dries out and gain it back when humidity climbs, so hairline gaps in January that close by May are seasonal movement, not a defect. Cupping is different — edges higher than the center means the underside is wetter than the top. Common sources are slab vapor with no barrier, a plumbing leak, a poorly ventilated crawlspace, or air conditioning left off for weeks. Find the moisture source before sanding anything flat, or it cups again.
Should I refinish what I have or tear it out?
Refinish if the boards are solid wood, still thick enough above the tongue, and you’re content with the width and layout. Replace if the wear layer is spent, the floor is engineered with a paper-thin veneer, there is deep water staining or subfloor rot, or you want a different plank size. A floor vent cutout or a doorway threshold usually exposes a cross-section of the board, which settles it quickly. Refinishing is the cheaper path whenever it is available, and it keeps a dumpster off the driveway.
How long does the wood have to sit in the house first?
Acclimation is a target, not a fixed number of days. The boards need to reach the moisture content they will live at year-round, generally within two percentage points of the subfloor and in balance with a conditioned interior. In practice that means the HVAC is running at normal settings, the cartons are opened and cross-stacked, and the installer meters both the wood and the slab until the numbers line up. Sometimes that takes three days. In a house that has been closed up and humid, it can take two weeks.
Which species survives dogs, kids and tracked-in grit?
Hardness is measured on the Janka scale, and it predicts dents rather than scratches. White oak sits around 1,360, hickory near 1,820, American walnut around 1,010 and Brazilian cherry above 2,300. Finish matters as much as species: a matte, wire-brushed or hand-scraped surface hides the scuffs that a high-gloss finish frames and magnifies. Sandy grit from the yard does more damage than any dog, so mats at every exterior door earn their keep. To get the moisture and hardness questions answered on your actual slab, call (832) 513-5639 and set up a walkthrough.
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