A Floor & Decor store opened in Austin not too long ago, and I’m a pretty big fan, having used them to buy almost all of the tile that went into House #2 (about 1,250 sq. ft total). They’ve got a pretty wide selection of tile and definitely put Home Depot/Lowes to shame.
I’m in the process of pretty much gutting and rebuilding our guest bathroom, and went to pick out the tile for the tub surround. I needed about 70 sq. ft of tile for the tub surround, and decided to splurge a little and get some nice travertine and fancy dancy border and decorative tile for one area of it.
The border tile was a smallish 3″x12″ mosaic piece that was $4.99 each, and the rest of the travertine was about $4/sq. ft. With some random other stuff I was getting (mortar, grout, etc.) I was guessing the total bill was going to be about $400-$450. My little rolling cart was full but not dangerously so, as it just wasn’t a ton of tile.
Now to the weird thing about our local Floor & Decor outlet, and something that has perplexed me every time I’ve been there. The first time I went was not long after they opened, and they seemed to have a ton of employees but very few customers, with like a 10 employee to 1 customer ratio. Odder than that, though, is that all of the employees were very, very young, at least college-aged and some very possibly still in high school.
And all of them are super young. Seriously. I assumed there’d be some grizzled old dude with grout on his hands there as a manager, but no, the entire workforce there (based on 6 or 7 total visits), managers and worker-bees alike, are all really young, and don’t seem to have much experience with installing tile, selling tile, etc. Fair enough, and I go there to buy stuff, not get installation help or advice, so it hasn’t been an issue.
I check out today and things seem to be going smoothly, we get all my stuff sorted and rung up, and then the very young girl tells me “Okay, sir, that’ll be $12,314.” No hesitation or question in her voice, as far as wondering how a few stacks of tile and some other random small stuff could cost that much.
And I thought for a second she was just joking around, but nay, she was dead serious. So we went over the receipt and, lo and behold, the 24 pieces of $4.99 border tile was keyed in as 2,400 pieces instead, which, umm, was the problem.
So, unfortunately, with just a few corrective keystrokes our new bathroom went back to just being a normal, fairly nice upgrade, and not a sparkling new $12,000+ luxury bathroom.
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