One crew for the floor and the paint.

Paint first or floor first

The order matters more than people think. Painting first and flooring second keeps roller spatter and cut lines off a brand new floor. Flooring first gives the installer a clean surface and no risk of a wet baseboard. Both arguments are real, which is why the answer is usually somewhere in between.

What we normally do is paint the ceilings, put the first coat on the walls, install the floor, then come back to finish the baseboard and the second coat. That way the base gets caulked and cut to the floor that is actually there, and you do not end up with a gap at the bottom or a line of old paint peeking out under new trim.

Because it is the same crew, arranging that sequence costs nothing. When the painter and the flooring installer work for two different companies, this is the exact spot where a week disappears and each one tells you it was the other's fault.

• Slab checked for flat and for moisture before anything is ordered
• Low spots filled and high spots ground down
• Baseboard pulled and reset, or shoe molding added
• Door casings undercut so the floor runs under them
• Cuts made outside and doorways sealed against dust

A Florida slab is your subfloor

Nearly every house down here is slab on grade, which means the floor is concrete poured on sand with no crawl space under it. Two things about that slab matter before anything goes on top of it. How flat it is, and how much moisture is coming up through it.

Flatness is the one that ruins installations. A slab that dips a quarter of an inch across a few feet leaves a hollow under plank flooring that clicks every time you walk over it, and grout lines that crack under tile. Low spots get filled and high spots get ground before any material goes down, and skipping that is the most common reason a new floor never feels right.

Moisture is the other one. Concrete sitting on Florida sand carries water and passes vapor upward, which is why underlayments and moisture barriers exist. What you are putting down decides how much of a barrier you need, and that gets settled before the material is ordered rather than after it is stacked in your garage.

Baseboard, transitions and the edges

The edges are where a floor looks finished or looks cheap. Baseboard either comes off and goes back on, or a shoe molding gets added at the wall to cover the expansion gap. Both are fine. Which one is right depends on the trim you already have and how much height the new floor takes up.

Doors often need trimming at the bottom once the floor height changes, and casings get undercut so the flooring can run underneath them instead of being cut around them in a wobbly line. Where one room meets another, or where a new floor meets existing tile, you need a transition that fits both heights and does not become a trip hazard.

Being a painting company helps here. Baseboard that comes off gets finished properly before it goes back, instead of being reinstalled scuffed with the old color still on it.

The house while a floor is going in

Flooring is dustier and louder than painting. Pulling up old material, cutting tile and grinding a slab all make a mess, so doorways get sealed, cuts happen where they belong, and we clean at the end of every day rather than at the end of the job.

Furniture has to come out of the room being worked on, and where it goes is worth planning before the first day. A whole house usually gets done in sections so you keep somewhere to live, and we will tell you honestly which days are the awkward ones.

Tell us what you are thinking of putting down and we will tell you what the room and the slab will take before you spend anything on material. If it is something we should not be the ones installing, we will say that too.