Nearly everything we are asked comes down to one worry: will the floor stay flat? It will, if three numbers agree — the moisture in the slab, the moisture in the board, and the humidity of the room where they meet. That is why Elena’s survey takes readings rather than photographs, why boards sit stacked in your house for a week before fitting, and why a handful of jobs each year wait longer than anyone would like. A floor is the last thing into a room and the first thing blamed when a building turns out to be damp; measuring first is how we stay off that list. The accordion further down answers the specifics — every answer is the one we would give in person, in the same words.

From first call: a survey inside three working days, a fixed quote within 48 hours, materials ordered on your go-ahead, seven days acclimatising on site, then two to four days of fitting for most rooms. Three weeks door to door is typical; a restoration that needs reclaimed stock sourced and matched can run five. The one date we will never promise is a fitting day before the readings clear — that date belongs to the screed, not to the diary, and pretending otherwise is how other people’s floors fail.

The handover pack closes with the finish schedule: clean with a damp mop, never a wet one; felt pads under furniture; a mat at outside doors; the first re-oil due in year two for oiled floors, and for lacquered floors not until the sheen says so. It also names the humidity range the guarantee assumes — an ordinarily heated home sits inside it without trying. None of this is homework the guarantee depends on; it is simply how a good floor stays good for thirty years instead of ten. Pets are fine, incidentally — claws mark oil far less than heels do, and an oiled floor is the one you can spot-repair without sanding the room.

New screed is the one that catches people out. Concrete dries at roughly a millimetre a day for the first forty millimetres and slower after that, whatever the calendar or the builder says — and a slab that feels bone-dry on the surface can still be wet where the boards would sit. So we test instead of guessing: hygrometer readings sealed against the slab, and a calcium carbide test wherever they disagree. If the numbers are high, we give you the date the slab will make rather than the date you hoped for. That honesty costs us fittings every year, and it is still the cheapest thing we do for customers — the alternative is a cupped floor and an argument nobody wins.