A Day in the Life: Phil Gilbert, Hardwood Giant Co. Owner

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Phil Gilbert has owned The Hardwood Giant for nearly two decades.
Phil Gilbert has owned The Hardwood Giant for nearly two decades.

Phil Gilbert has owned The Hardwood Giant for nearly two decades.Phil Gilbert has owned The Hardwood Giant for nearly two decades.

 

Phil Gilbert started The Hardwood Giant Co. from scratch, twice.

He founded the installation, sand-and-finish and refinishing company first in Shawnee, Kan., in the late 1990s, and quickly earned the respect and money of Kansas City homeowners. In 2007, he said goodbye to all that, uprooted the business and planted it in Charlotte, N.C. It was a slow start, but he pulled himself and the company up by the bootstraps.

Now, nearly a decade later, Gilbert has established his company firmly in Charlotte’s middle- to high-end residential market, earning between $3,000–$25,000 per job for an average annual revenue of $1.2 million. Gilbert invited Hardwood Floors to spend a day with him in April, on the Tuesday before the National Wood Flooring Association Expo kicked off in downtown Charlotte. As owner, Gilbert’s charged with keeping The Hardwood Giant machine running, which means driving from job site to job site, checking in on his guys and making sure the home is ready for work.

7:28 a.m.

Gilbert is roaring through downtown Charlotte—what the locals call Uptown—in his company vehicle, a jet black Toyota Tundra. He typically would avoid driving through the heart of rush hour, but he volunteered to pick up HF’s associate editor on the way to his first project site of the day.

Gilbert’s in his truck most of every workday. The Hardwood Giant doesn’t have an office, and besides a warehouse for stocking material, it doesn’t have a physical location at all. Gilbert runs the operations from inside the truck, making gas a significant business expense. He tries to calculate his daily project routes for maximum efficiency. Today’s little detour into the city center is only two miles from his first stop, a new home owned by an architect.

Ninety-five percent of the time, Gilbert’s clients are the homeowners themselves. “We don’t like messing with builders,” he says. When Gilbert operated Hardwood Giant back in Kansas, the business was 50 percent new construction, and he says it was a nightmare. “It’s too hard to get paid and too hard to coordinate schedule changes when they want things done right away.”

Homeowners are a little more flexible. This client, for example, first asked Gilbert to get started back in February. Gilbert went to the house shortly after he was contacted and saw it was still under construction and the electric wasn’t set up yet. Gilbert declined and explained his reasoning in a lengthy email, he says. The client understood. “I had to do the right thing, so we waited,” he says.


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The home is on the edge of uptown in Charlotte’s Cherry district, an old neighborhood that has seen an uptick of building and remodeling since the economy began recovering post-Great Recession.

Many of Charlotte’s neighborhoods are “popping” right now, Gilbert adds. His customers tend to be invested in the stock market; as it goes up, so do the number of estimates. “I’m getting calls from Realtors I haven’t heard from in years,” he says.

7:43 a.m.

Gilbert arrives and sees a Horizon Forest Products truck; one-man delivery crew James Morrison is already underway unloading 3,000 square feet of solid 2¼-inch No. 1 red oak. About 75 percent of Hardwood Giant’s jobs call for solid wood flooring, either unfinished or prefinished, and Horizon supplies the majority of it. One reason Gilbert trusts so much business to them is because the delivery staff are always on time and trustworthy.

Gilbert checks the wood flooring upon delivery for quality issues.Gilbert checks the wood flooring upon delivery for quality issues.

“I want guys that know what they’re doing and aren’t putting holes in the walls,” Gilbert says.

Gilbert walks into the house and tells Morrison where to stack the flooring. He says he likes to monitor flooring drop-offs when he can to make sure the flooring isn’t in the way of any other project site tradesmen.

While the delivery is going smoothly, Gilbert is a bit uneasy. Flooring bundles left overnight are magnets for thieves, Gilbert says, recalling things he heard while he was back in Kansas City working new construction flooring projects.

Gilbert says he would like to get the wood moisture tested, the subfloor prepped and the floors racked as soon as possible because “then the thieves will have to take out one board at a time.”

8:10 a.m.

Gilbert is on the road heading toward a home in the gated community of Skye Croft Estates in Waxhaw, N.C. It’s a half-hour drive, and the route takes Gilbert onto the highway, past the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The Hardwood Giant installed the floors inside the building’s executive offices in 2011. The specs called for a bamboo floor stained dark black to look like asphalt. Two other companies had failed to get the stain to adhere to the bamboo, so the project manager approached Gilbert. His crew used a mister to apply the stain, and it held.

NASCAR asked Gilbert to work another job, but he turned it down. The schedule would have required his guys to come in on Easter, something he didn’t want to ask of them. “It was a rough timetable. My guys are family guys, church-going guys,” he says. Besides, the company had enough work as it was, thankfully.

It wasn’t like that when Gilbert first moved to Charlotte. Despite all his legwork in the months prior to his big move, he had still struggled to gain a footing in the flooring market. Gilbert says it didn’t make sense to him—he chose Charlotte because, in addition to being near his family, the demographics matched the clientele he worked with in Kansas City. He thought he would be able to replicate his business strategies and his success, but it wasn’t easy. “I did estimate after estimate, and no one bit,” he says. This wasn’t Kansas anymore.

Finally, Gilbert was commiserating with a contractor friend in Charlotte and told him what his prices were. The contractor shot back a puzzled look and told Gilbert he was charging way too much. He had forgotten how hard he had to work in Kansas City to get his prices where they were, and assumed he’d start from that point in Charlotte. He started competing on price and the jobs flooded in. As estimates turned to jobs, jobs began turning into client referrals and he was able to start charging more.

Gilbert manages the company from his truck, which means a lot of mileage and a lot of minutes on the phone.Gilbert manages the company from his truck, which means a lot of mileage and a lot of minutes on the phone.

8:32 a.m.

Gilbert calls the owner of the next home. The homeowner is out of town this week so Hardwood Giant can install, sand and finish the floors in his home without disturbance. Gilbert asks for the location of the spare key, and what follows is a multi-point instruction. The homeowner isn’t an ordinary civilian—he is a combat veteran who spent time with Delta Force, the elite U.S. military unit, and now he conducts marksmanship classes across the country. The key, he tells Gilbert, is in X part of the yard, behind Y and buried beneath Z. Gilbert hangs up and calls his No. 2 guy, Michael Graham, to relay the key location before he forgets it. A few minutes later, Graham calls back and says he can’t find it. “The guy’s military,” Gilbert responds. “It’s probably buried deep.”

8:56 a.m.

Gilbert is entering the city of Waxhaw now, where he says Hardwood Giant has nearly cornered the residential market.

Gilbert pulls into a driveway with two white vans and another Hardwood Giant-branded truck. The crew found the key and started cutting and removing carpet in the master bedroom suite. Graham is there supervising two other Hardwood Giant employees, Rodrigo Pereira and Edwin Barrios, who have a combined 26 years of flooring experience between them. They will be installing select solid 3¼-inch red oak to match the existing wood flooring. Then they’ll sand all 2,000 square feet tomorrow and coat it next week.

Top: Edwin Barrios has been working for The Hardwood Giant for 10 years. Bottom: The floors in the military veteran’s home show the effects of the previous owners mopping the floor.Top: Edwin Barrios has been working for The Hardwood Giant for 10 years. Bottom: The floors in the military veteran’s home show the effects of the previous owners mopping the floor.

Pereira and Barrios start laughing the moment Gilbert walks into the room and stands next to Graham. The boss and No. 2 are wearing the same shoes—a pair of Hoka One Ones, which look like Skechers Shape Ups, only chunkier. Each pair costs a pretty penny—$150—but Gilbert and Graham, 45 and 44 years old, respectively, swear by them. They compare step counts on their Fitbits, and they often hit tens of thousands per day.


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Gilbert walks the rest of the home and sees the wood flooring on the first floor is cupped. He knew this was the case ahead of time—the previous owners wet-mopped the floors. Gilbert says homeowners often don’t know the proper way to maintain floors, so he provides a free cleaning solution from Bona and a maintenance brochure to his customers upon job completion. “Bad cleaners give us a lot of business,” he says.

When the carpet is removed, Gilbert sees an issue. The orientation of the plywood subfloor means the floor joists in this room are perpendicular to the rest of the first-floor joists. The crew was planning to install the wood floor in this room parallel to the wood floor across the threshold, but now they’ll have to install it perpendicular. It’s minor but unplanned. Gilbert calls the homeowner: “When you show up Thursday, I don’t want you to think we did something wrong,” he says.

Michael Graham, right, is Gilbert’s No. 2 guy. He’s only worked for the company for a little more than a year, but his background in custom home building makes him invaluable.Michael Graham, right, is Gilbert’s No. 2 guy. He’s only worked for the company for a little more than a year, but his background in custom home building makes him invaluable.

9:26 a.m.

Gilbert gets into Graham’s truck and they leave to do a post-job walk-through together at a client’s home in the Highland Creek district, north of Charlotte.

Graham started with Hardwood Giant about a year and a half ago; before that he had his own homebuilding business in Springfield, Mo. Graham and Gilbert’s work relationship includes a healthy amount of good-natured ribbing. “Oh, you have to buy me a new Fitbit,” Gilbert tells him in the truck. “You didn’t tell me I couldn’t shower with it.” Graham responds, “You dumbass.”

Before Graham came on board, Gilbert covered the entire Charlotte metro area. For one man and one truck, that was a lot of driving. Now North Charlotte belongs to Graham. The pair don’t often work together, but today happens to be a lighter day for Gilbert, so they are spending the day together with the HF reporter in tow.

Graham is the company’s 12th full-time employee. Hardwood Giant consists of Gilbert and Graham, six refinishers, two coating guys and two installation guys. They’re the best around, Gilbert says, and for their loyalty, he says they are paid 25 percent higher wages than any other company in town. Pereira and Barrios are of Brazilian heritage, as are most of the employees Gilbert has hired. Most of them are related or knew one another before working for Hardwood Giant.

For this 1,547-square-foot floor, the homeowner was going to use flooring he bought from a liquidator, but there were three sheens in the box.For this 1,547-square-foot floor, the homeowner was going to use flooring he bought from a liquidator, but there were three sheens in the box.

Gilbert’s phone rings. It’s Pereira, who tells Gilbert the homeowner’s alarm is going off. Gilbert starts dialing the homeowner for the third time today, a bit embarrassed. They’re able to turn the alarm off with the homeowner’s help just as they pull into the driveway in Highland Creek.

10:01 a.m.

Gilbert and Graham poke around the house, looking at the floor for any imperfections while chatting with the homeowner. He had purchased a box of prefinished flooring from a liquidator and had asked Hardwood Giant to give him a quote. When Graham opened the box during his estimate, he noticed there were three different sheens. The homeowner said other installers gave him a quote without telling him about the mixed sheens, “but Mike had the wherewithal to come into my office downstairs and say, ‘Hey, you better come up here.’”

He immediately hired Hardwood Giant, and they installed 1,547 square feet of a 3-, 5- and 7-inch-wide, hand-scraped prefinished floor—not from a liquidator. During today’s walk-through, the homeowner tells Graham how happy he is with the outcome, and says he had a stack of their business cards but handed them all out already.


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A prefinished floor is not a common product for Hardwood Giant. About 80 percent of their jobs are still site-finished, but prefinished makes the company more money and Gilbert hopes for more prefinished jobs in the future. “Prefinished has so many benefits,” he says. “People don’t have to get out of the house during installation.”

10:37 a.m.

Back in the truck, Gilbert gets a text message from a previous customer, Tricia. She texts: “Good morning, Phillip! ... We love the wood flooring you installed and would like to get the 4 bedrooms done as well. Would you be able to do this, and do you still have the estimate you completed in October?” The truck keeps rolling forward to the next site, where Gilbert is placing a lockbox on the door of a home Hardwood Giant will be working in tomorrow.

11:23 a.m.

Gilbert and Graham sit down to a meal at Hickory Tavern, a statewide restaurant chain.

12:07 p.m.

Gilbert and Graham arrive at a project in Ballantyne, where Gilbert works most often. The home is stately—a red brick façade, three gables, tall windows with white trim and black shutters and a large front yard. Hardwood Giant recently stained and refinished the oak floor.

Gilbert and Graham walk inside after removing their Hokas on the front step. Gilbert, head down, squints his eyes and looks for imperfections. All looks good, but then he spots a dead fly on the floor. Luckily the topcoat had set before the fly passed, and Gilbert plucks it off the ground.

1:03 p.m.

Graham takes his shoes off outside the home. The coworkers have matching Hoka One Ones, which won’t win any runway contests but are comfortable after taking thousands of steps per day, Gilbert says.Graham takes his shoes off outside the home. The coworkers have matching Hoka One Ones, which won’t win any runway contests but are comfortable after taking thousands of steps per day, Gilbert says.

A large portion of Gilbert’s day-to-day is spent like this, driving between job sites. “You can’t do an install and then do an estimate with stain on your hands, all sweaty,” he says. He visits homes before, during and after his guys complete the project.

The home he’s driving to now has a couple thousand feet of 2¼ select-grade oak on the upstairs landing that his crew installed last week. It was supposed to be sanded, too, but the homeowner came home unexpectedly and sanding was rescheduled for tomorrow. These small hiccups aren’t uncommon. “It doesn’t really ruin the flow of work, but it’s put on the homeowner to be more flexible when we come back,” Gilbert says.

1:35 p.m.

Gilbert and Graham are back at the Cherry district home where Gilbert supervised the flooring delivery this morning. Gilbert has a moisture meter in hand and is setting it on the subfloor every few feet, calling out measurements. Graham follows him with a pencil, writing down the moisture content on the spot Gilbert measured.

The first level comes back with readings between 9–11% MC. Upstairs, the moisture content is between 9–10% MC. “It’s all better than I expected,” says Gilbert. “I thought there would be areas way out of whack.” The flooring, still wrapped in bundles, is between 7.5–8% MC. “That’s good and within range,” Gilbert says.


RELATED: Understanding How to Measure Moisture Can Avert Job-Site Disasters


The electric isn’t hooked up yet, which will delay Gilbert’s crew.The electric isn’t hooked up yet, which will delay Gilbert’s crew.

Gilbert tells Graham he believes the air conditioning is hooked up and he’ll tell the homeowner to run it at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Then he’ll come back in two days and recheck the same spots.

Graham takes a look around the property and comes back inside with a pained expression. The power meter on the side of the home hasn’t been hooked up. The metal shell casing is installed, but inside there is only a piece of cardboard. “The homeowner had emailed me yesterday saying the A/C would be turned on today, but there’s no power meter?” Gilbert says. Now he’s not sure when he’ll be able to schedule the rest of the project.

2:07 p.m.

Back in the truck, Gilbert looks at his phone and sees four emails from qualified leads. He starts responding immediately. He knows they are qualified because a while back he hired a company to receive all phone calls to Hardwood Giant. His company was receiving an unusually large number of calls from telemarketers, so hiring the company allowed Gilbert to focus on managing his business. The company asks a list of questions, and if the caller has potential to become a client, the company emails Gilbert the information.

Once Gilbert responds to today’s emails, he calls his web manager. He outsourced this, too, and the company created a website that ranks high in Google searches for flooring in the Charlotte area. Gilbert pays the company on a per-month basis to maintain the website, and he says it’s worth every cent. Hardwood Giant receives a dozen inquiries on the website’s contact form per week.

“I know how to leverage technology to beat the big guys,” Gilbert says. Starting in 1993, he had worked in IT at a company in Kansas City that provided software services to IBM. He didn’t care for IT work, though. He always wanted to do art, and working with wood and stains was about as close as he could get while still making a living.

2:25 p.m.

Gilbert and Graham visit Horizon Forest Products to look at prefinished, hand-scraped, 3/8-inch-thick birch flooring. Graham had mentioned the product to Gilbert earlier in the day and wanted him to take a look at it in person. The product is priced attractively, Graham says. Horizon Assistant Branch Manager John Rendleman lays out a number of stain options on the ground in front of them. Graham starts digging through the boxes to find boards for making sample squares with. Flooring manufacturers furnish their own sample squares to industry professionals, but Graham isn’t interested in those. “You always see those samples made from really nice-looking boards. They’re perfect,” he says. “But they’re never that way out of the box.” Rendleman says they can have the boards for free.

Graham chooses flooring boards from each box to make true-to-life samples for Hardwood Giant customers.Graham chooses flooring boards from each box to make true-to-life samples for Hardwood Giant customers.

While he gets busy setting aside boards from each box, Rendleman takes stock of Gilbert and Graham’s matching shoes. “I thought the movie was Be Like Mike,” he jokes. “But this is Mike Being Like Phil.” The guys head to see how Pereira and Barrios are progressing at the home from earlier today, and to pick up Gilbert’s truck. It will be the last stop of the day.

On the way, Gilbert and Graham get to talking about North Carolina’s most famous son, Michael Jordan. Graham’s wife works for the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, which Jordan owns. If the stars align, Graham says he thinks he can get Jordan to hire The Hardwood Giant to work on the floors in his 27,000-square-foot mansion. While Graham thinks their time is right around the corner, Gilbert is more tempered: “I won’t believe it until I’m in the door.”

3:11 p.m.

Rodrigo Pereira installs the final pieces of flooring at the military veteran’s home.Rodrigo Pereira installs the final pieces of flooring at the military veteran’s home.

Pereira and Barrios are nearly finished installing the floor. The guys begin packing up. Graham leaves to beat traffic, while Gilbert waits until Pereira and Barrios are out of the house so he can lock up. He puts the key in the lockbox and gives the double doors a tug to make sure they’re not opening until the crew arrives tomorrow to sand. Satisfied, he jumps in his truck and leaves.

It was a shorter day than normal for The Hardwood Giant. Gilbert typically finishes up between 4:30–5:30 p.m., but he wanted to get the HF reporter back downtown before rush hour was in full swing. “It was busy, but not busy,” Gilbert says. “It was an in-between-jobs day today."

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