Places to Insert One Thin Dime
There are any number of places where you might insert one thin dime. But one place I hadn’t considered is a gap in a hardwood floor.
Earlier today I met at one of my under contract new construction listings to meet with the buyer’s agent and my seller’s flooring guy before he started stripping and staining a white oak floor as was negotiated in our contract.
One slight problem, though. The buyer’s inspector had used inaccurate terminology when he walked through the single family a week or two earlier, referring to a couple gaps in the hardwood floor as cracks. When it comes to hardwood flooring there is a significant difference between a crack and a gap.
To make a long story short, the out of town buyer referred to the inspection report as her holy grail and as she spoke by phone with the realtor she absolutely wanted to have the “cracked” floorboards replaced. If I were in the same situation I would want the same.
But the floorboards weren’t cracked. They had simply gapped in the course of the past year as this new construction Bucktown home sat empty and did not have enough humidity coursing through the air during the dry winter months of Chicago.
When we realized the miscommunication triggered by the inspector’s poor word choice we calmed the buyer by emphasizing that we had gaps and not cracks. And based on some online research the seller discovered via a hardwood flooring site that indicated that gaps the width of a dime are considered normal.
And that’s where the dime enters the story.
Armed with this new information the buyer asked her realtor to do what I will call the “Dime Test.” So my counterpart went from the first to the second to the third floor with a dime and attempted to insert it in any gap. None of the gaps were wide enough to accept the coin. Thus we passed the “Dime Test” for hardwood floor normalcy.
The flooring guy, with a decade of experience, had seen this situation before. With the passing of time and appropriate interior climate control the gaps will greatly dissipate. Add to this that he will apply a wood putty as needed the gaps become a non-issue.
And so what had the makings of a much bigger issue several hours earlier came to be what I love - a non-issue.
As for other places to insert a shiny thin dime what comes to mind are gumball machines, coffee shop tip jars, piggy banks, and fountains for ten cent wishes.
Until the next time…
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