Underlayment's for Engineered Hardwood Flooring & Luxury Vinyl Flooring

Part 2: Emil Kapanadze with EKO Flooring joins me to discuss underlayment's for Engineered Hardwood flooring and Luxury Vinyl flooring.
Emil explains correct installation techniques from his years of experience installing all types of flooring including correct underlayment and moisture barrier applications.

Emil also gives ballpark costs for different types of flooring cost and installation.

Did you know that most engineered hardwood and luxury vinyl flooring is discontinued after just a few years? This is great information from Emil, So if your buying flooring be sure to buy an extra box or two so you are covered if you have flooring damage that needs repair.

Contact EKO Flooring for you flooring materials, installation and repairs.
Sales Manager
Emil Kapanadze
Sales: (818) 917-7736
https://www.ekoflooring.us/

Check out part 1 podcast video with Emil on youtube 
https://youtu.be/Ej7_R3xX5Pk

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home. Don't panic. Just listen to the rest of this podcast. Happy New Year everyone. Thank you for your continued support. It's now 2024 Sorry for the delay in publishing this episode. I've been very busy with my YouTube channel. So if you don't know now you do, I have a YouTube channel so search home inspection authority on YouTube or click the link in description below in this podcast. I have over 400 videos of home inspection defects, how to and DIY videos as well as videos of the very podcast you're listening to now. So check it out. Hope to see you there and please like and subscribe the channel. Today's episode is going to be part two with a Emil Kapanadze from EKO flooring. We're going to cover underlayment options for engineered hardwood and luxury vinyl as well as a meal is going to give us some ballpark quotes per square footage of each type of flooring. So let's get right into it. Now is there something about cork that I don't get why it makes such a good? underlayment for

Emil Kapanadze: 1:09

sound soundproof just sounding it's just soundproof. Yeah, pretty much that's in the condos. That's what they use soundproof some condos requires the regular quarter inch. So what we do is we glue this down, this gets glued. So

John Laforme: 1:22

no one else. No one else requires that just condominiums.

Emil Kapanadze: 1:26

Yeah, if you have neighbors. It's mostly condos. Right.

John Laforme: 1:30

Got it. Yeah.

Emil Kapanadze: 1:31

Especially those nice half inch man. That's proof. That's that's thick, half inch cork. You're looking at about 250 a square foot for this material alone. Yeah. Something made him in Portuguese. Some high end cork. Of course you can, you know, you got your Chinese stuff and anything but you're still spending about $2 a square foot for this stuff.

John Laforme: 1:52

Wow, that price of that floor just went up. Yeah. You

Emil Kapanadze: 1:56

can get this quarter inch cork actually in Florida core. You can get this in Home Depot. I believe. You're looking at as a common sheet. Yeah, yeah, they're gonna come in. Oh, no, no, no, they could come in rolls. They just come in and roll. They come in rolls. Yeah, and bout four foot rolls

John Laforme: 2:11

and, and it doesn't crack when you roll it up. It's just like the

Emil Kapanadze: 2:15

rolls they do. Those rolls are cheap. They're about those quarter inch rolls and Florida quarter. They're about 80 cents. They crack the ends of it. They stick up. So you're thin. It's too thin. It sticks up that you can't get this in the roll. Now.

John Laforme: 2:31

I thought I was asking this. So that can be sheets only how big of a shoe two by three? Oh, so it's like laying down a tile floor? Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know that.

Emil Kapanadze: 2:41

Only mostly in condos again, because your neighbors.

John Laforme: 2:44

Interesting. So

Emil Kapanadze: 2:49

this goes on top, for example. If you're going with laminate, you got all this, you could

John Laforme: 2:54

put this is what this is what's catching my attention here is the thickness of these together. So one inch. So that means you are probably cutting or redoing every single door in the trim. Yeah, all the trim. Yeah, this is something anybody, any homeowners need to understand. So when you get into this, and you are adding an inch now you may not have an inch already in your house, you may have something a lot thinner, correct. So understand that all your door trim moldings coming down to that old floor. So if they have to come in and now cut all your moldings at the bottom to raise up the height to fit this under it. That may be more money too. Because now you have to cut everything right.

Emil Kapanadze: 3:43

The casings are not so much much of a problem. We have the power tools to cut them. Okay, but it's the doors. The doors Yes. Doors gonna have to be coming off.

John Laforme: 3:51

I see the doors gotta be trimmed on some some cases. They're not going to close. That's right. That's right. Yep. Yeah. So that's something to consider. So that's actually that's

Emil Kapanadze: 4:01

mostly in condos when we run into those that's really

John Laforme: 4:04

thick. Yeah.

Emil Kapanadze: 4:05

You had an inch.

John Laforme: 4:06

That would make me an inch taller. I'm okay with that.

Emil Kapanadze: 4:11

Oh, yeah, there we go. That's yeah, that's

John Laforme: 4:13

some that no homeowner understands little things those little. They wonder why why is it so much and like, Well, ma'am, you know, we have to cut your doors. Yeah. Why do you have to cut my doors because the new floor is higher than the old one. Yeah. And now Now another thing too, is doing this and only one room is going to create a difference in height between floors. Yeah, that's something that's often found that homes and I let people know you got you got a floor level change here. Yeah, they asked me why. And I'm like, well, it's so simple. Why somebody put a new floor here and didn't put one here. Just this floor is that the people? Yeah, this this floor is thicker. And it's a good floor, but they never didn't fit To show the room so you have a reducer here. Yeah. Going from one height to the transition because the next and some of them are pretty ugly looking guy. Yeah. So if I was going to do this, or if I was going to do this in my house, I would do every inch of this house. Oh, of course. Every edge. Yes. Yeah. I wouldn't have this like sloped down to go to the kitchen. I'd have it everywhere. Now. Is this waterproof? No. So is there something like this that's good for kitchens to or not

Emil Kapanadze: 5:25

engineered hardwood? Yeah. Sometimes people put engineered hardwoods in their kitchens and their bathrooms. We've done it of course, it's gonna, again, same thing is gonna go. How much water are we talking about?

John Laforme: 5:36

Like this a messy people and bathroom? Exactly.

Emil Kapanadze: 5:40

Exactly. So in the, you know, in the kitchens, I understand. You know, maybe you're more careful than others in the bathrooms. You know, you're taking a shower, water's coming in no matter what. So we don't really recommend it for the bathrooms. I wouldn't either, but some people put it. So what's gonna happen realistically, you know, water is gonna come in some planks might get damaged. Maybe buckle here and there. So make sure you have that extra box. Yeah. Or to have them have them and then you're gonna you know, call, call us. We'll come and we'll do a repair.

John Laforme: 6:09

So you guys do repairs to it. Okay, good. Of course. That's really good information, Emil. Wow, I'm really having a good time right now.

Emil Kapanadze: 6:17

This is great. hit you with more than tell me. Let's see.

John Laforme: 6:21

Can we talked about all that? So. Okay, so for example, you got this engineered engineered floor. And then what the pit that a piece in the middle of the floor gets damaged. Oh,

Emil Kapanadze: 6:36

no. How do you cut it out? engineered hardwood? Yeah, we're fine. Since it's glued down again, the glue down installation. Everything's.

John Laforme: 6:44

Each piece is glued? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Emil Kapanadze: 6:48

Every piece is glued, everything is glued down. So what you would do is you let's say it's just one board that got scratched or whatever happened needs to be removed. You would chisel out the border of it trying not to damage the neighboring plank isolating till maybe we actually hand chisel them. Okay, honest. Yeah, we kind of hand chisel just around a first so they wouldn't damage the other boards. Then we cut inside with actually power tools. Yeah, get the core most of the stuff out and pull

John Laforme: 7:19

it from the inside out. Yeah. Just like one of those repairs down there on my floor. That's how

Emil Kapanadze: 7:24

you would do that, too. Yes, yes, yes, yes, very carefully, because you start damaging boards and one after another, and then you redoing the whole room, right. So you could take out that plank very carefully, you know, clean out the clean out with the glue under it, clean the old board, you know, everything basically,

John Laforme: 7:42

you know, start from starting from scratch again, from scratch again,

Emil Kapanadze: 7:46

the board gets cut to size, unless it's you know, it's perfect size or in the middle. If you have the same size board perfect. You are gonna have to censor the tongue and groove. What ends up happening is you leave the tongue. Now with the groove, you cut the bottom part off, got it? So this gets in, right. And it sits on top of the other group. Other tongue sorry, yep. You put the glue on top, you're gonna have to put the glue in, then. That's how you do it, man. That's how you do it, right? So it's doable. It's doable. 100% We do it all the time. If you have the same material leftover like a box that gets taken out put in sometimes you can't even notice it. It's It's amazing. Yeah. The ones that you do notice is the ones that don't have the box. And you're we're you know, we're looking for the closest possible match ever. It's never perfect. And then you have a repair job. It's it's unless you want to redo the whole room. That's the only option you sometimes you have. Yeah, floors were done seven years ago. They're discontinued. They're gone.

John Laforme: 8:58

Got it. Okay, your website here, as a lot of good information on here. Oh, wait, man. Thank you. Hang on. Let's go back to this where you weren't done yet.

Emil Kapanadze: 9:08

Yeah, I was gonna say with this stuff to repair to them. It's a little more complicated, because again, it's not a glue down installation. So if a plank is in the middle, you have two options, you're gonna have to remove half of the room, getting to that plank, to get to the you know, to the click System and continue back. Or same thing you take out that board. But when you insert this one, it's gonna have to be glued, not to the floor, but to the other boards around it. I say it's not going to be perfect again. And you might hear a few little click sounds here and there. I'll tell you why it's because now it's glued to the other remaining boards. So it's still a free floor installation, but it's if you have the material you might as well just remove those ones inserted. Just

John Laforme: 9:59

put the couch here Ma'am, yeah, there we go. Put the coffee table that you're not gonna see it ever again.

Emil Kapanadze: 10:06

The repairs are a little annoying with this stuff.

John Laforme: 10:07

Yeah, yeah, I run into a lot of flooring issues, I read up floors all the time just in my responses, substandard floor installation. Call a professional to come take a look at this and see what they have to do and give you a quote before you actually sign off on the house. And as you might have to redo it. Yeah,

Emil Kapanadze: 10:26

yeah. And those repairs are, you know, for the most part, unless you have a box leftover of the engineered hardwood. Anything of this is going to be a mess to really repair to recover that yet. We didn't cover this underlayment is basically like cork, it's just a little more expensive. You know, it's made out of rubber instead of cork material. The only times really this is used as more like your really high end places. Like maybe in Santa Monica, for example. They want the rubber

John Laforme: 10:57

underneath the engineered. Yes. Alright, just this stuff

Emil Kapanadze: 11:01

underneath here, the engineered or the laminate because you can't put this under. Alright, finally. Interesting. Most we've ever had to put was how much was it? It was

John Laforme: 11:15

this or you get a real thin one there too. Oh, yeah, they have different sizes.

Emil Kapanadze: 11:18

So sometimes, if we're installing hardwood floors, engineered floors, we need a level a few rooms or something we sometimes use these products and yeah, it's great. Yeah, we've had to put those one condos so strict, and it was a half inch cork, and a three eighths rubber. Of just soundproofing before the hardwood floors, so we were up like an inch something. Wow, ridiculous. The craziest, but they really cared about you, the neighbors? Well, that's

John Laforme: 11:49

good. No, that's a good practice. I agree. It's because I own a condo. And, and I've lived in condos, and I've lived in apartments. And so you know,

Emil Kapanadze: 11:57

you know, of course they don't want any kind of soundproofing. So

John Laforme: 12:02

anything else you want to add before we get into your website? Anything you think that might have left out?

Emil Kapanadze: 12:08

I mean, we pretty much discussed everything right? Yeah. Pricing.

John Laforme: 12:11

So we kind of touched on pricing. Yeah, didn't really get into I would like to dig into that a little bit more.

Emil Kapanadze: 12:17

Let's go back into the materials, right? Yeah, you will or you want to go to the labor? Well, let's,

John Laforme: 12:22

let's, let's just use a standard. Let's say the house is 1800 square feet, and this person wants to do the entire house with the expensive stuff. And then then the not expensive stuff. Okay. So let's kind of give somebody give everybody a ballpark include Meeks. I'm curious to know what that would be. So well, let's say a 1500. square foot house, then maybe a 2000? square foot house.

Emil Kapanadze: 12:46

Let's go 1000 2000 for easy calculation. All right. Sure. Okay, yeah, that was in 2000 1000s. Good start. That's gonna start so we can double it if your house is yeah, yes. Okay. So 1000 square foot home. Let's say there's no demo involved. We'll get into that after but let's say you're gonna put down the nice stuff. engineered hardwood, you know, at $9 a square foot, plus, you're going to need you know, the glue runs about $1 was a rough numbers, by the way, but you know, right ballpark. dollar a square foot for the glue. So you had 10. Now, realistically, to install this stuff, about four to five. In the middle, let's just go for. So you're like $14? A square foot? Okay. at 1000 square feet. $14,000. Right.

John Laforme: 13:31

So this doesn't sound too bad for a full house. That's us.

Emil Kapanadze: 13:34

It's him. Everyone has their own budget. Right. And

John Laforme: 13:37

it could be it could be some add ons, because you may have to cut the doors.

Emil Kapanadze: 13:42

Again, it's only if it's a condo, realistically, because if you're in homes, unless so if we're going to home and they already have hardwood down, or they have these floors, you know, solid down sometimes they don't want to remove them. They just want to go on top. We don't recommend I don't like that. We don't like that either. But it's

John Laforme: 13:59

like putting two layers of shingles on a roof for what it doesn't help anything. Now,

Emil Kapanadze: 14:03

I know. I know. But to remove these floors, you're looking you know, at roughly $2 a square foot, too.

John Laforme: 14:10

Right. That's the right way to do it, though.

Emil Kapanadze: 14:13

I know. I know. But sometimes the customer is looking at Oh, $2,000. And we you know, realistically you can go on top is just you have a different word on Yeah, but the homeowner can demo

John Laforme: 14:23

this themselves. Yeah, yeah. Do it yourself. They

Emil Kapanadze: 14:27

should realistically you should always get rid of it. You want you should know what's going on under because we don't know maybe you have mold under there. And then you putting another layer on top right? And

John Laforme: 14:36

the old saying is this little Home Depot and everyone. Okay, so I'm gonna be a DIY er man, you gotta demo stuff yourself. It's fun. I love demolition, save the money and save the money you just fill up the trash can and and you know, take a break to do it again. That's it. You clear out the whole room. You saving yourself money. Yeah. And you take some pride of ownership with that, you know, I didn't put the floor down but I ripped it up We

Emil Kapanadze: 15:00

have a lot of clients who have their own carpet. Yes. And the ask Is that okay, we told me, Go ahead knock yourself.

John Laforme: 15:06

I don't want to get down and touch your nasty carpet. And this is 1970. I've been some nasty homes and we have both of us. Yeah. Okay, so. So you sound like above 14 grand with that expensive stuff. And about 1000 square foot house. Okay, 14 grand. So 2000 square foot, you just basically doubling that doubling? That's

Emil Kapanadze: 15:26

one 800. Maybe we'll get a little discount the material of the vendors in a good mood. But realistically, yeah, those are just rough numbers, of course, going off this material. This is more on your high end. Yeah, that's very high. And it's a higher end material. Roughly what people spend is about they want to be in the seven $8 range. Okay, for hardwood floors, for example. So something

John Laforme: 15:49

like this couple of knots are okay, then couple knots here and there.

Emil Kapanadze: 15:53

Again, and I told to the customer, of course, it's up to the installer. It's going to be his craft. Is he going to pull out every board from the box and just throw it down? Or is he going to be like me when I started out selective? That's what that's what I started I was my first out of the ripping up carpet. I was opening up boxes. Yeah, I have that under my belt. So I took out, I took out boards and I will take a look. And I be like, Dad, I don't know about this board. He's like, Yeah, let's use this one for the closet or let's not at all Yeah, sure closet. You know, so we kind of worked around them. Sometimes you have a nice clean board and the end of it has this, you know this beautiful knot right here at the end of the board. So you just cut it out you there's nothing

John Laforme: 16:35

beautiful about it not being sarcastic.

Emil Kapanadze: 16:39

You kind of think I can use that board for the end you start thinking and you kind of work with it, of course start putting everything down. So yeah, something like this about $7 a square foot.

John Laforme: 16:51

Okay, and going with the let's say that same size 1000 square foot house with the with the luxury vinyl with the luxury, not the cheap vinyl, the luxury luxury vinyl, so have the ghetto vinyl,

Emil Kapanadze: 17:04

vinyl, your price range, the ones I carry, of course. And about three to $5 a square foot material, three to five. So something like this decent size actually about roughly four, right? What a square foot so let's go off the sample right here. $4 a square foot to install that you're at$3 $7 a square foot 7000.

John Laforme: 17:32

That's that's half. That's pretty much half. That's pretty much

Emil Kapanadze: 17:36

no glue needed. Sorry, not spending any glue. And realistically homeowner can install this themselves. I'll be completely honest. I did

John Laforme: 17:44

who did it? I can do it. Anybody can

Emil Kapanadze: 17:46

do it. You don't need any new by the way. I

John Laforme: 17:49

made a video Well, I filmed my whole process to finish. I haven't edited it yet. I gotta get by it's here. And I'm going to release that on my YouTube channel. So because I was trying to I was trying to just add these things to my YouTube channel. Because you know, these are DIY stuff. Yeah. And I love sharing knowledge. So it's, it's what we're doing right now. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to releasing that and you'll see me actually putting this down. My biggest mistake was I cut on when I was cutting my toilet flange around around the toilet. Okay, okay, I just measured wrong and I'm like little white. Yeah, it was like an old like an egg shape on once. Hell that with I'm like slap on slapping myself going well, how the hell did you do that? Did you smarter than this? Yeah, I just measured off wrong. That's all happened. But it was still it still worked. So I made it work how many

Emil Kapanadze: 18:37

times you run back to Home Depot.

John Laforme: 18:40

Man I got I should have frequent flyer miles over there. But anyway, your website Thank you. Let's get into your website. So I think we covered the pricing with everybody's I can get a general idea of you know what, yeah,

Emil Kapanadze: 18:54

of course, they can always call and we can always explain their situation to know this is the you know,

John Laforme: 18:59

now you told me that you're doing you're doing the sales over at the showroom. Yes. Yes. So Emile is the man can you want to sell yellow phone number right now for people to call you and let them know where you're at? We do

Emil Kapanadze: 19:11

have a showroom phone number but personally I like working off my cell phone. Okay with our cell phone 24/7 So that's how I actually work you know? Sure. So 818-917-7736 You know our phones are on us 24/7 I I answer calls 24/7 realistically I get some sleep and so I cover the sales now. Okay transition straight into the sales and when the showroom six times a week that I got

John Laforme: 19:38

I gotta make it down there like I said next time in Culver City I'm swinging by for sure. I take it a lunch. Yeah, I want to see your shoulder looks really nice man. How do you manage all these different things? All the suppliers that manufactures drop those off for you and just kind of make displays? How does that work? Let

Emil Kapanadze: 19:54

me tell you a little story of what happened right. So this was a different this location. was a different hardware store different? Oh, yeah, we actually did a lot of installs for them. And over the years, you know, ever since COVID, they kind of, I don't know, they kind of just, it was just kind of going down. So the management wasn't working out anyways. And long story short, they close down. They close down, and we were just, we want to short them for a very long time. My dad and I, we didn't know how to pull the trigger. Always was like, my dad's like, well, you know, you're my main guy. Oh, sorry. You want me and guy like, what do you know?

John Laforme: 20:34

What are we doing male, you know, like,

Emil Kapanadze: 20:35

you know what was gonna happen? And but we knew it had to be done, right? You want to grow in this business, you have to take these big steps, you know, you have pulled the trigger. So when this kind of happened, we all sat down, you know, my family. Now we all sat down. We're like, we're doing this like, there's no, there's no way

John Laforme: 20:52

around. So cool, man, that your hope you and your family are all in on this. Oh, that is awesome. Puts in work? That's awesome.

Emil Kapanadze: 20:59

Difference. Yeah, thank you. So what, we just pulled the trigger, and we were like, we're gonna take over this location, you know, we knew who was renting it, you know, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, it was, it was within two weeks, we transitioned into this place. So

John Laforme: 21:14

they were just going to walk get out of their, their lease, and you were going to just step in, correct.

Emil Kapanadze: 21:20

For this location, you know, with our name, of course, they were Lee, they had different name, the

John Laforme: 21:24

end, it was probably somewhat setup for display already. So you kind of just worked around that. So they left

Emil Kapanadze: 21:28

everything. Oh, all those samples realistically, although all those would samples. They know the vendors, they want you to sell it. Sure. So they will bring it and make it easy for you. They'll bring it for you. You know, some want to charge some understand that.

John Laforme: 21:43

Wait a second, you want to charge me to make you money? Yeah. I've had many conversations with people like that on the phone. Exactly. You

Emil Kapanadze: 21:49

know, we pay a lot of money for rent. And anyways, let's not get into that. So we had, we had all these different companies. But over the years, I installed personally for 10 years, my dad's been installing for 20 years. Yeah, you know, so we we installed most of these companies, I've worked with them. You know, I haven't met the vendors yet. I've installed the material myself. God has. So we're like, oh, cool. Like that's valuable, man. Yeah, well, we've installed this so many times, like I want to meet the guy, I want to see who's behind the company, right? The meet the vendors. So that little two week transition, or I was there every day. And you know, vendors come in, of course, they did hear that they were closing down to be some new people here. So I started meeting everybody. That's what it was. So meeting every vendor, and then it was kind of up to me really, we want to continue working with, right. And it wasn't just because you have the nicest material because you can have the most nicest material. But if you're if the connection is not there, your

John Laforme: 22:47

deck your deck. Yeah, of course, basically, I understand the point. Not everybody gets along in business. Fine, you got to find the right.

Emil Kapanadze: 22:56

Connections. It took a while. So there was a lot of different materials, believe it or not, there was some material there some racks there, and the vendors didn't come in for about six, seven months. And I we waited because we had to I wanted to see everybody you know, the material was here, obviously, they may be sold. They worked with them. So some vendors were there every month every two weeks, making sure everything's up to date. All the samples are smart eight, and I'm probably still in business 100% And I gave him more room. Yeah, and the ones that's exactly what you're supposed to do. Come in like oh, wow, it's a new store. Oh, congrats. Like we've been here for seven months where you've been, you know, and shelf

John Laforme: 23:35

space. It's like any any store, any grocery store, any Home Depot, any auto detail place ever walk into like a AutoZone. And look at the spray wax. There's like 50 different brands, right? It's like a rainbow color or just different things like what do you start? Yeah, and people fight for that space all the time. Exactly. site for that they like, smooth all the time just to get that that eye level spot. So they're looking straight, they'll see it because they want it's all about placement, right product placement, of course, it's that it's an old thing. It's

Emil Kapanadze: 24:13

also what I'm going to personally show, you know, because a client can come in and it's you know, they say oh, show me the engineered hardwood and you know, in the lighter tone, and then it's up to me to start pulling samples, you know, and sometimes they think we favored some vendors over the other ones. Realistically, anyone that I've do business with, I like them all the same. It's fair game. It's up to the client with the choose, you know, yeah, they choose the lighter colors and what I'll do and sometimes they do too, we walk around we should we look at samples. Oh, this one you know, I'll pull it out. I'll pull some out. They choose someone we pull out 10 samples. We had the natural light coming in we sow the seed, so we put the sample down later next big difference 100% I even let the customers borrow these how they look at home. You Yeah, because it's a big thing. It's crazy.

John Laforme: 25:02

So your services. Let's see, let me get into that. So you got hardwood floor installation. Yes. As we talked about. luxury vinyl floor installation, laminate floor installation, hardwood stair installation. Yeah. Tell me about that. Hardwood stair installation.

Emil Kapanadze: 25:18

It's fun.

John Laforme: 25:20

That's sarcasm right there. It looks No, it's

Emil Kapanadze: 25:23

very crowded. You have to put a lot of craft into it. It's not like just installing floors. You got to be a finished carpenter. Correct? Correct. Yeah, correct. It's now you know, just installing huge square footages you're working in a small environment? Yeah, you're doing fine cuts. It's not just one after another. It's

John Laforme: 25:38

all going to be looked at all 100 plates. Like, it's like a showpiece in a house. Yes, you do those kinds of so like the open stairs? Oh, yes. You have to? Yeah, there's I've been down that road a little bit in the past. It's gonna be kind of a tough one to deal with. And you got to be really good at finish work. Yeah,

Emil Kapanadze: 25:58

you have to be very good finished carpenter that's going to do this kind of work and, and

John Laforme: 26:02

hardwood floor refinishing? So if somebody actually has a real hardwood floor, you you're available for that? Yes. Yes,

Emil Kapanadze: 26:08

of course, we refinish and all the time to do repairs, and we do repairs. We love them.

John Laforme: 26:12

This is something I can help you with. I could definitely refer you a lot of customers. Definitely for repairs and installs. But sometimes they just need repairs. I

Emil Kapanadze: 26:22

know. I know. So they don't want to spend big money which they shouldn't they already have floors. You're the

John Laforme: 26:26

sales guy, or you're probably talking to a new floor anyway.

Emil Kapanadze: 26:30

Well, you know, that's fine that you say that. Again, everyone has a budget. Yeah, what they're trying to spend. I'm just going to be as open as possible. If they're trying to find some wood. That's, I know. It's not it's not available. I'm not going to you know, be tell them the Hey, yeah, we're gonna take a look at it short and sweet. No, we it's gone. You have this option in this option.

John Laforme: 26:53

Right? Right. Right. So laminate floor. Yeah, not my favorite. Right? You get that? Is that the herringbone with the herringbone?

Emil Kapanadze: 27:01

Yeah, it's coming back right now. It is.

John Laforme: 27:05

Interesting. And repair. So it doesn't matter how big the repair is. You guys just have a was flat rate for that. How does that work? But this is like a basic one piece. How do you do that? Just by the hour.

Emil Kapanadze: 27:21

One piece? Yeah, it's, you know, stuff by the hour because it's never gonna be one hour or two. Right. You know, it's, it's gonna be there half day or full day charge. I say. Like that. Yeah, we

John Laforme: 27:32

Yeah. I'm just curious about how that works. I just haven't dealt with that. And where's your showroom located so people can look, look at it in Culver

Emil Kapanadze: 27:39

City, California. 4137 Sepulveda Boulevard, Culver City,

John Laforme: 27:45

California. All right. And six days a week and your website is eco H E. K. O flooring.us. Yes, that's the website address. And then for sales, you already give out your number for that. And I'm gonna put all this information in the description of the podcast so people can find you. Oh,

Emil Kapanadze: 28:07

there, sit there, you know, drink his coffee and study for the test. Oh, nice for like two hours, you know, however long our class I was contributing.

John Laforme: 28:17

Like, by keeping you entertained? Pretty much he's

Emil Kapanadze: 28:20

like, he's like, I had to drive you there. Because you know, you weren't driving it. Yeah. So I had to drive you there. And, you know, what, am I you wouldn't drive back home, it was too far away. Sure. You know, so he's like, he's like, I just get my car smart was coffee, you know, studied for the most part. Yeah. Then I think it was like six months later, I got my license. I was driving myself but then that helped him actually physically study for it because he was working, you know, at home. It's very tough to sit down and kind of study you really, you know, but yeah, he did that while I was training to do so. It's going

John Laforme: 28:55

now we're gonna go down memory lane here. I just thought of something. I'm pretty sure it was you used to come in high a lot. Yes. I did. You You know I think I used to give you shit for it took about like, you know what a meal. You seem to be about two seconds behind everybody else. And I'm gonna say that's probably cuz you get stoned before you got here. Probably you were I remember. I can see your eyes. You just you just give me this dead stare. I remember. But I always mess with you. And I said a meal. You're definitely missing those moves. You're like a half a second. Late every time someone comes after you. They really helped me they did that. That was great. It was great. So that was how long do we How long did I teach you guys by the year? oh nine. He was like, the more than I was like two years. Two years. Yeah. Two years in. Did you do any MMA tournaments? I don't remember

Emil Kapanadze: 29:53

no MMA just jujitsu ones we did. Yeah. Yeah, that was fun.

John Laforme: 29:58

I'd find fun teaching you guys I was A lot of fun. It's great. We learned

Emil Kapanadze: 30:01

so much to be honest. And yeah, look

John Laforme: 30:03

at Robert nowadays and you know, Robert, I know he's Mr. Stand up over there. No boxing kickboxing. These ones in Beltsville. Yeah. He's done quite well in the in his arena there. That's really good. So now I'm happy to see you know, Chase. Remember Chase? Yeah, of course. I remember who, you know, Chase. I inspected this house a wall about a year ago, I think was about a year ago now. He's doing really well. He's got a really good job. It's awesome. Engaged. No, no, he was married now. And he's married. Yeah, I

Emil Kapanadze: 30:33

was at his wedding. Yeah.

John Laforme: 30:36

And what else? You were that you, Robert Chase. Were the main guys. Yeah. Well, that was the three that the Three Musketeers. In other words, you guys were always there. Like, I don't think you guys ever miss classes. Yeah, you guys loved it.

Emil Kapanadze: 30:55

When I first got into it. Yeah,

John Laforme: 30:57

I was like I want to do so when I met you. You were 1716

Emil Kapanadze: 31:01

I was 16 and a half. And what are you now? 17? I just turned 30. Right. I know. I have a three year old daughter. Oh,

John Laforme: 31:09

that's awesome. Dude. See, everyone's grown up. I love to see a love to see you guys. I'm happy to see that. All you guys are so young when I was training, you know, but you've all it has to look the same. Yeah. You saw your class the other day. And he's like, You look the same dude.

Emil Kapanadze: 31:27

Robert told me that too. He's like, he's like, you're gonna see John. He's a he hasn't changed. Really? At all. So fine. That's why I went to the gym to see everyone take a

John Laforme: 31:38

magic pill that keeps me young. Yeah. Okay. Now, I just met a gym rat for a long time. It's hard for me to sit around and get fat. It's not me. It's just not in my DNA. I don't think it was ever you right? No, no, no, but now I'm really happy to see you guys come up and just you know, turn to men. And then look at you get your you're running a business with your dad. That's fantastic, man. That's that's a really good story. Man. You started off just on the bottom is stuck it out with your dad and your family and y'all stuck together that that is a great story. should be proud of that. I'm proud. I'm very proud of you, man. I'm very proud of you proud of Robert Chase. All you guys. It's awesome. And it was great seeing you guys. I got it. You know, we're gonna do. We're all gonna get together. I'm gonna I'm gonna arrange something. We're just gonna go hang out and just talk about, you know, the old days, whatever life life. You know, maybe I could still give you guys some advice. I'm still old and I did anyway, that's uh, I think we covered

Emil Kapanadze: 32:38

a lot covered a good amount. I

John Laforme: 32:40

think everybody listening. I learned a lot today. Emile has a lot of information and a lot of experience. Don't let his young age fool you. Because you've been doing this for a minute. So when somebody when a salesman had actually installed stuff, or you know that that's a that's a big step up from from just a salesman who who's never really done that so. So I'm sure Emil can answer all your questions if you call them and give you some give you some honest, honest opinions about stuff. And because I taught him discipline when when he was trying to jujitsu, okay. All discipline. And I know he still has that in them. So let's, let's give him a call if you're going to talk hardwood floors or luxury vinyl. And yeah, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Emil Kapanadze: 33:35

Thanks for having me.

John Laforme: 33:36

Good stuff. Great seeing you. And one more time. Ek Oh, flooring.us. Check out the website and give me a call and we'll take care you say well, all right. Thank you.