Mohawk Flooring Sold by Floors to your home Internet

Review of Mohawk Rockford Maple "cabin" grade engineered wood sold by Floors to your home. Mohawk labels the boxes "Eastridge Value Collection". The best boards are quite attractive. I ordered 45 boxes of material roughly 1270 sq. ft. of which I expected to be able to use about 1000 sq. ft. 660 sq. ft. was usable. Of that 660 sq. ft. 500 was center of room usable.

On the whole I would recommend against purchasing this material or any cabin grade Mohawk material. It is cheaper to buy first quality material to be used in any application, which you want to look nice. I would not purchase this material again.

The material which I was able to use has a surface, which is exceptionally scratch resistant. Glue residue is easily removed even when fully dried.

Cabin grade should consist of tight knots, dark grains, etc. The surfaces should all be finished with all coats of finish material and tongues and grooves should be accurately cut. It should not be every QC reject coming off the production line. The material delivered reflects badly on both Mohawk and "Made in America" labeled products.

Note:

The material is sold as is, so you have no recourse regardless of what material you do get or whether the sq. ft. quantities stated are in fact received. FTYH customer service is nonexistent. Emails re quality and quantity of materials received are ignored.

I cannot rate the performance of the flooring, as I am still in the installation stage.

The material cannot be coated with another finish material without sanding the protective layer off. I tried lacquer of a scrap piece. It formed raised surface streaks and would not lay flat. Water based finishes would probably fair more poorly. Refinishing would have solved a number of issues and provided some water infiltration protection at exposed edges and unfinished areas.

Rather than use tongue and groove labeled glue I used Titebond Brown Interior/Exterior Wood Adhesive. Tongue and groove glue is water rated type 2, while the glue used is rated type 3 (impervious to water when dry. The glue is water clean up. I used the glue to water seal imperfections at joints, as other finishing materials could not be applied to do the same job. The glue dries the same color as joint spaces. The used glue is not only superior to the T&G glue specified, but it is much cheaper. I used about gallon for 250 sq. ft. of material installed. T&G glue runs about $10 a pint versus $28 a gallon ($3.50 a pint in gallon quantities) for the better material. For my 1000 sq. ft. Glue would run $112 for the better glue, but $320 for the T&G glue.

A number of boxes contained material which was totally unusable. Other boxes contained boards which were all usable. Packaging was inconsistent. It is possible that you will get all good or all bad material with smaller orders. More than half of the boards had permanent marker marks such as lines and "C"s which can be removed with Magic Eraser, a Clorox product, or generic equivalent.

Here is the breakdown of the 45 boxes of material received.

It took me a week to remove marker marks and sort the material by grade.. Of the total material some 52% was usable for one application or another - main floor, under appliances, and closets. I ran out of places to use low grade material.

General - Virtually all boards had tongue and grooves, which did not seat fully. For a more consistent looking floor a way around that problem is to leave a 1/32nd to a 1/16th inch gap between boards. Most of the boards will mate to that tolerance versus flatly, seating as designed. Ends are beveled while sides are supposed to be flush.

Good and usable boards - 47%

25% - minor imperfections - Minor bowing, clear surface or with knots less than half an inch in diameter, minor nicks at edges and corners.

7% - good surfaces with torn up base layer on one side or the other

5% - clear surfaces with defective or no grove or tongue cut, chipped end corners

10% - Good surface with tight knots of varying sizes

Defective and missing material - 53%

20% - Large knots with depressions, poor wood putty repairs, and unfinished surfaces

25% - Defective coating (not finished or partially finished), radically bowed or warped boards. deep machining gouges like heavy rollers cutting a path through the board, machining burn marks, gouges, large open knots repaired poorly, oil residue and mold impregnating the wood, split surfaces, unfinished boards.

9% - Packaging shortage - sq. ft. specified does did not match contents of boxes