Flooring in Athens, TN: Installation & Replacement

Hardwood floors in Athens, TN: install new, or refinish what's there?

Refinish first, if the wood is worth it. A lot of Athens houses have real oak under carpet or under thirty years of wear, and sanding and finishing it costs a fraction of replacing it. We look at the boards during the free measure and tell you honestly which way to go. If it's too thin to sand again, or the floor has water damage, we replace it, and most of what we install now is engineered hardwood glued down full-spread. Wide plank we glue that way is not going to squeak. Solid hardwood still has its place upstairs and in the older homes in town, nailed to a wood subfloor. More on the difference in our engineered vs solid guide.

Carpet for Athens bedrooms

Carpet's home is bedrooms, and Athens buys a lot of it. Our advice hasn't changed in three generations: put the money in the pad, not the carpet. The pad is the moisture barrier, the comfort, and the reason the carpet still looks right in five years. On fiber, the house line is simple. A polyester will clean better and a nylon will wear better. Kids and pets push us toward nylon; a guest room can take polyester and never know the difference. Details on the carpet page.

LVP and COREtec in Athens

For a busy Athens living area, kitchen or basement, we recommend WPC luxury vinyl plank with at least a 20 mil wear layer. Waterproof through the plank, warm underfoot, and it handles East Tennessee humidity better than the rigid SPC cores do. COREtec and Titan Surfaces are on our showroom floor, and we'll tell you which one fits the room rather than which one has the best poster. What we won't sell you is laminate. We stopped, on purpose, because the pressed core swells when water finds it. Why WPC, and when SPC.

Flooring replacement in an Athens house: how it goes

1. Free measure at your home. We look at the rooms, the transitions, the stairs, and the subfloor. Flatness is the make-or-break for any click floor, so we check it before we quote, and any prep is priced into the estimate, not added later.
2. Samples in your light. We bring them, or the showroom is 22 minutes away on Isbill Road in Madisonville.
3. Our own crews. The people who measure and the people who install work for Miller's. Two-year workmanship warranty on the install.

A customer over in Riceville, which is Athens for our purposes, put it this way:

"Cassandra guided us through selection of LVP and Carpet, thoroughly explaining wear rating, stain resistance, etc. Jonathan came out the day after our LVP was down, took one look at a small section and carefully took it up and re-installed it to meet his standards. We weren't charged for the additional work."

— Phil, Riceville

Commercial floors in Athens

The Food City in Athens is ours, and it's the job that started us flooring Food City stores across the Southeast. We've done flooring work for Tennessee Wesleyan. For stores, offices and clinics we install SPC glue-down, commercial carpet, epoxy, rubber and, new this year, heat-welded seamless vinyl for kitchens and healthcare. The commercial page has the lines; bring us the plans.

When we'd tell you not to buy our usual recommendation

A rental you're turning over, or a house you'll sell next spring: buy the floating SPC, not the WPC. It costs less, it's honest, and we'll happily sell it to you. A bathroom or a laundry room: we steer you to tile, not hardwood and not engineered, because real wood swells no matter what the box says. And if your existing hardwood just needs a screen and recoat, we'll say so, and you'll spend less with us than you planned to.

Getting flooring prices in Athens

Get ours. The estimate is free, it takes about an hour at your house, and we've been doing this since 1970. Call (423) 442-1697 or send the estimate form any time; after hours we call you back the next business morning.