Hardwood installation in Vancouver, WA

Vancouver is old by West Coast standards. The Hudson's Bay Company post at Fort Vancouver dates to 1825, the city was incorporated on 23 January 1857, and the reconstructed fort, Vancouver Barracks with its parade ground and the Pearson Air Museum now make up Fort Vancouver National Historic Site on the north bank of the Columbia. The 2020 census counted 190,915 residents, the fourth-largest city in Washington, and the city recognises 68 neighbourhood associations inside its limits alone.

For flooring, it helps to think of Vancouver as three cities layered on top of one another.

The first is the older core: Esther Short, Arnada, Hough, Shumway and the streets around the downtown waterfront and Esther Short Park. These are the houses most likely to have original wood under later coverings, and the ones where a floor has to sit comfortably with existing trim, door heights and stair details. The useful first question in an older house is not which product, but what is already down there and whether it is worth keeping. Sometimes a careful sand and refinish is the better project, and we would rather you know that before you choose anything new.

The second is the wartime and postwar city. In the 1940s Vancouver added six residential developments in short order, Fruit Valley, Fourth Plain Village, Bagley Downs, Ogden Meadows, Burton Homes and McLoughlin Heights, and suburbs to the north followed after the war. Hazel Dell, now 23,569 people, began as an agricultural area where livestock still grazed near I-5 and Highway 99 into the early 1970s before it filled in with homes and shopping centres. Houses from these decades have usually seen several floors come and go, and a good project often begins with careful removal and a look at the subfloor before anything new is specified.

The third is the newer edge: east Vancouver beyond NE Andresen Road, with Fisher's Landing and the Cascade Highlands area, and the fast-growing unincorporated communities. Orchards grew 41.8 percent between 2010 and 2020 to 27,729 residents; Felida, a semi-rural community near Vancouver Lake, grew 29 percent to 9,526; Salmon Creek counted 21,293. In these homes the typical brief is different: replacing builder-grade carpet, carrying one hard surface through an open plan, and choosing a carpet for the bedrooms and stairs that will actually wear well.

Whichever Vancouver you live in, the approach is the same: understand the house, narrow the options to the few that genuinely fit, then plan the whole project, including removal, stairs, transitions and trim, before anything is ordered.