After moving furniture out of the way, the job typically begins with demo, or demolition/removal of the existing flooring. Bear in mind that if we are removing wood flooring or tile that this will be fairly loud and will create dust. We will take great care to cover furniture and cabinets with plastic, and we also have very high quality HEPA filter vacuums attached to our demo tools. This goes a long way to keep the dust down, but even with this it would be misleading to not expect some dust from tile demo. Wood flooring removal has a little dust, and carpet removal almost none. Once old flooring is removed we will assess the subfloor and begin floor prep. Every subfloor needs some amount of floor prep, and expecting this we will always include this in our bid. If we are aware of unusual subfloor issues ahead of time like cracking and shifting of the slab, high or low spots, etc. we will typically add this cost into your bid. However we almost always expect to have to do some grinding down of high spots, some filling of lows. This is a critical time to take the proper care before your new flooring goes down. A subfloor that has not been properly prepared and issues remedies will cause trouble or even failures in your flooring down the road. Other aspects of floor prep include: undercutting door jambs so that the flooring can slide underneath; undercutting stone facades and fireplaces so flooring can slide underneath; shimming the subfloor if necessary to ensure that the new floor meets up with existing flooring perfectly flush if possible, to avoid the use of transition trims whenever possible.