Stairs & Trim in New Madrid, MO

New Madrid is the county seat, with 2,787 residents at the 2020 census, sitting on an oxbow of the Mississippi about 42 miles from Cairo, Illinois. The 1811–12 sequence produced close to two thousand shocks, the largest around magnitude eight, and the zone is still active — a magnitude 4.0 was recorded here in February 2012.

It would be dishonest to tell you an earthquake dictates your flooring choice; it does not. What the geology actually means day to day is that the ground here is fine alluvial soil, and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources notes that the sandy soils across this part of the state are unusually susceptible to liquefaction. Ground like that settles unevenly over decades, and in an older river town you feel it as a floor that is out of level long before you see a crack.

So in New Madrid we spend longer with a level than we do in a newer town. A slab or a subfloor that has settled a quarter inch across a room will not stop a carpet, but it will show under a rigid click-lock plank as flex, hollow spots and eventually failed joints. Where we find it, we say so and price the levelling compound or the underlayment as its own line rather than burying it.

The older housing near the river also brings the usual river-town realities: crawlspaces that need to breathe, and rooms that have been re-floored more than once. We pull the old material and take it away rather than laying over it, because layering onto an unknown base is how the second floor fails faster than the first.