Luke Hiller Inc

unknown

It was great. They were excellent crew. They got everything done in 2 days. They were accomdating and nice. The crew was also well mannered and clean.

Luke was punctual to all his appointments and related well with us. He is easy to work with and seemed to know his stuff.
His crews were very professional and performed very good work. They had some hard repairs to perform but did them well. HIs crews worked well with other contractors working at the residence.
The entire house was a very difficult flooring repair, but when completed it came out in very good shape. After he was done (and paid) we noticed a problem area that turned out to be quite a bit of work . I was not Lukes fault but a problem with the contractor, Luke fixed it anyway. Luke came out and make the repairs at a very good level without complaint - very professional. My only and quot;Band quot; was punctuality. he was very busy and had a hard time making some appointments.

Had difficult time getting quotes, and the mad that quoted job then got injured and had to get his workers to do the whole job instead of the expert for the job. Workers put wrong color grout in seams.

Overall, we are satisfied with the work done by Luke Hiller. Luke is a person who is really into floors. We got his name from the PBS and quot;This Old Houseand quot; show when a home in Southern California was remodeled on that program. Since Luke's company did the floors, we thought that PBS would only pick the best contractors and we should too.
Truth of the matter is that the quality of the work done doesn't depend on the skill of the owner but only on the skills of the the crew doing the work. In our case, the crew did a very good job. Not a great job but the end result is very good. They are experienced with old homes and did a good job getting all of the floors evenly sanded and finished.
Some of the things that could have been better are as follows. FIrst, we weren't prepared for the huge mess. Although they sealed off as much as they could, some doors and windows were understandable left open. As a result, we had a coating of sanding dust everywhere on our patio and in our garage where we stored our clothing and items from the house. Two months have passed and we're still cleaning! Had they told us about that or looked to see where the dust was going, this could have been prevented. They didn't seal the door to the basement and everything in the basement was covered in dust. Stain even seeped through the floor onto things we stored in the basement. Next, they could have communicated better on the color. We wanted to go to a darker, richer color and really only had one stain to look at. Although the color is darker than before, it still is not the color I wanted. It looks fine and will do but I'll always wish it was different. I was also surprised that the crew didn't have all of the tools and equipment they needed. I had to lend them a ladder and hand dolly (to move furniture). The person applying the finish didn't know there were stairs and I had to lend him a paint brush since he didn't have one. Not a big deal but makes you wonder.
I've been told that having floors refinished today in California requires the use of low VOC/Water Based stains and finish. Not like the old days of good old oil based finishes. Many of the flooring contractors are just learning how to deal with and use these new products. So, some of the issues we had (in particular the color) could be due to these new constraints.
On the positive side, Luke stopped by regularly to check on the work. There were some problems with the stain spreading unevenly along the sides of the planks that had been re-grooved. They reworked this several times to correct as best as possible. Whenever I noticed bubbles in the finish, they took care of that. We also noticed white paint specs in the finish probably due to sanding the old base shoe and knocking off chips of paint. Jonathan was here today and meticulously removed those specs (there were at least 50) and refinished those spots. He even took care of a few problems that I caused. It did take three weeks for them to take care of this after it was noted. However, they did take care of it and appear to stand behind their work correcting problems without making a fuss over it.
Overall, we're happy with the result. The floors look good and only my wife and I know where the little problems are. Most people think they look great and we've received many compliments. As far as cost goes, I think that Luke Hiller might be a bit over priced for what you get. Other contractors can do comparable work for less. However, I wouldn't hesitate to use Luke again and feel that you can count on a good quality end result for what you spend.