On our site you will find products listed as "Factory Seconds", or "Second Quality". What is that; what does it mean? Are we selling you our trash? Is it a euphemism for "junk Flooring"?

No, it really isn't.

Take a look at this video, because showing seconds is the best way to explain them. One of the two brothers who own Floors To Your Home, Dan Kahn, introduces them very well, and our Quality Assurance Director, Hayley, who installed two floors in her own house with our seconds, goes into more detail. We shot a lot of this at her place, so the flooring you'll see her sorting through - that's the stuff she used! Every plank of her finished floor was a second quality purchase.

What are the takeaways?

The Good

• You absolutely can wind up with a beautiful floor

  that you're proud of.*

• You will save a lot of money. A LOT of money. Seriously. That's why we sell this stuff, and we sell a lot of it - to a lot of happy people.

The "Bad"

• You should order at least 20% more than your needed square footage to accommodate removal and hiding of blemishes. 95% of our customers who do this (that's our official position - I think the percentage is actually higher) are able to finish their floor.
• This will be like a puzzle. Not a Rubik's Cube, just a puzzle, but you will have to do a little extra work, the kind Hayley shows us in the video, to install your floor.

Bad? Sure, okay. It's true that seconds floors are not for everyone. Dan says that at the beginning of the video. You have to ask yourself if those two bads are worth the money you will save on the flooring. Really, it's just the second one. The first, the extra material? You'll still save a ton of money, even with 20% extra. Heck, you need 5%-10% extra with a first quality floor anyway.

Our customer service people are very open to talking honestly about second quality flooring, both in general and with specific products, so if you're looking at any of it you should feel free to call them and ask questions. We're not hiding anything, we will answer whatever you ask us.

The only exception is with opening boxes. As we pointed out, we never see inside these boxes of seconds. They come on wrapped up, and they leave us to go to you still wrapped up. We don't inspect them, and we don't sort through them. You will be the first person outside the manufacturer to see the actual flooring.

*Here, I pulled this from our old Reviews page:

Erin writes: Adam, Just wanted to let you know we had part of the flooring laid this past weekend. It is beautiful. You mentioned that it was seconds but we only found 3 boards out of about 20 boxes that had issues. The man that laid it for us had his wife come look at it and asked for your web address to order for their home. My husband and I were concerned about ordering from the internet especially when you said it was seconds. Thank you for being a honest online company. I will definitely recommend you to friends. 05/03/2010

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David is has written and made videos about flooring products and installation since 2011 at Floors To Your Home (.com), where he is also the PPC Manager, a Researcher, a Website & Marketing Strategy Team member, Videographer, Social Strategist, Photographer and all around Resource Jito. In my spare time I shoot and edit video, put together a podcast, explore film history, and mix music (as in ‘play with Beatles multi-tracks’). Connect with  W. David Lichty

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