Frank Hazen and Lyle Meredith have been friends for more than 20 years. Between the two of them, they have more than 75 years of experience installing flooring.

Together they own and operate Big Foot Floors, which opened three years ago; Hazen is the owner and Meredith is the manager.

“I wanted to open a bar,” Hazen said. “But it was Lyle’s idea to open a flooring store.”

And now they provide service throughout all of Oregon.

“We started slow, but we’re so busy now that it’s hard to keep up,” Meredith said.

They stock every flooring material except ceramic tile. Hazen, 51, has a full-time job as a construction site foreman, so he leaves most of the responsibilities to Meredith, 75.

The two met when Hazen was starting out at as a carpet installer about 30 years ago. Meredith worked selling carpet, so the two regularly saw each other. A relationship grew, and Hazen said they are now regularly mistaken for father and son.

The business has landed contracts for subdivisions by word of mouth, Hazen said. Big Foot Floors also keeps up to date with new styles of flooring, receiving new samples about every other week.

Meredith takes measurements for flooring, then independent contractor installer crews lay the flooring for customers.

Meredith keeps the crews busy enough that they don’t often work with other businesses, he said. Meredith is trying to get away from being down on the floor installing, because, after 54 years of flooring, his feet don’t perform like they used to.

Since Meredith is Big Foot Floors’ only employee and they are an independent company, they have little overhead, which allows them to offer low prices.

“Making customers happy is the name of the game,” Meredith said. “Ours is a referral business, because if we do a good job, then a customer will refer us to their neighbors or someone they know. And they will hire us because they will already know what kind of work we do.”

What they’ve learned

Over many years of flooring, Meredith said, there has been a shift from carpet to vinyl. While each material has been improved, such as sheet vinyl to laminate vinyl and hardwood to engineered wood, he said the majority of flooring he does is vinyl.

“We still do full houses of carpet but not nearly as much we used to,” Meredith said.

The most popular material they offer is laminate vinyl styled to look like wood. Meredith said it’s easy to care for and inexpensive, which makes it popular. Meredith said the most popular flooring style for a house is vinyl in the living spaces and carpet in the bedrooms.

“When you wake up, you want to feel little fuzzies on your feet, instead of cold tile,” Hazen said.

One of the strangest flooring materials they offer is cork, which is like hardwood but has better acoustics, meaning it doesn’t click like wood does.

One of Hazen’s goals is to grow the store to the point where he could work there full-time instead of at a different job. But he said that is still a couple of years in the future, and said he would need to hire additional employees before that could happen.

“Flooring isn’t a difficult job, but it’s honest work,” Meredith said.

The name of the store comes from a business that Meredith owned previously in Alaska, and Hazen agreed that it fit their business.

Meredith recommends giving a call before going to the store, since he is out on measurements every day.

The store is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the average time for a job is less than a week. Meredith said he measured floors for one customer May 6 and will have new flooring installed May 10.

“It’s a fun business because when you’re done with a job and people call you to say it looks beautiful is a very rewarding thing,” Meredith said.

— Reporter, 541-548-2185, cbrown@redmondspokesman.com