Three markets in one small city
Midvale is compact and it contains three quite different flooring situations.
There is the older core around historic Main Street: modest early and mid-century houses, many small, most on wood subfloors, a good number of them updated piecemeal over the decades.
There is a substantial rental and investment-property market throughout the city, which is a completely different brief from owner-occupied work.
And there is Bingham Junction on the west side, which is new construction on redeveloped ground and behaves like any modern build.
Rentals and turns
A meaningful share of what we do in Midvale is rental turns, and the right answer for a rental is different from the right answer for a home somebody is living in for twenty years.
What matters for a turn, in order: how fast it goes in, how it holds up to tenants who did not choose it, and how easily a damaged section can be repaired without redoing the whole unit.
That usually points at luxury vinyl plank. It is waterproof, it handles abuse, and critically, a floating LVP floor can be taken apart from the nearest wall so a single ruined plank in the middle of a room does not mean replacing the floor. For a landlord that repairability is worth more than the small difference in material cost.
Two pieces of advice we give every investor in Midvale. First, standardise. Running one product across every unit you own means a repair in year three still matches, and it means you can keep a single box of attic stock instead of tracking six discontinued SKUs. Second, keep the leftover planks. Colour lots vary, and a plank from the original box will always match better than anything anyone can buy today.
The older core
The small older houses around Main Street have the same characteristics as older stock elsewhere in the valley: sound framing, floors that are not flat, and a reasonable chance of original wood under whatever is currently down.
Because these houses are smaller, the flatness question is often easier and cheaper to solve than in a larger home, and the whole main floor can frequently be done in a day or two.
As with Millcreek, mid-century vinyl tile and its black adhesive can contain asbestos. If we find something suspect we stop and you get it tested. We are not an abatement contractor and we will not disturb it.
Bingham Junction
The west side of the city is newer construction on redeveloped land, and it is a straightforward modern job: concrete at ground level, wood frame above, HOA rules in the townhome and condo product about sound transmission to the unit below.
Get us the HOA’s underlayment or impact rating requirement before you pick a floor. It is a five minute conversation that avoids having to pull a floor back up.
Getting to you
Midvale is about eight minutes from our Murray shop, which is close enough that we can usually stop by the same week.