We called this company because they were well-rated by Angie's List members over the last year. The response we received for scheduling an estimate was prompt and professional. Robert came out as scheduled and walked through the space with us, measuring the rooms and asking questions about finishes, etc. He made recommendations (no stain versus staining). He conveyed a strong air of having expertise and many years in the business. We received the estimate one day later than expected, but communication channels were open.
We scheduled the job within the time frame we needed it done. We were told it would be a 3-day job. The job was set for a Wed.-Fri. window the week before the new tenants were to arrive. A 50% deposit was needed to confirm the job, so I mailed that check in with a copy of the signed estimate right away.
On the day work was to begin, we were told the crew would arrive between 8:00-8:30 am. I left for work at 7:00, leaving my husband at home to meet with the crew. No one showed up. My husband called the number he had (Robert's) to ask what was going on and left a voicemail. He did not get any reply. I found out about the situation around 3:00 and tried the office line. Agnes was courteous and professional but was not aware that the crew had not shown up at all. She made calls to investigate and got back to me. Apparently several workers had "called off" on that day, but the office hadn't been aware that they weren't working. I still don't know how this is possible. When I asked why Robert had not communicated with my husband or the office, I didn't receive any explanation.
After much back-and-forth, Agnes bumped our job to the top of their priority list for Thursday. I made it clear the job needed to be done on Friday since I had another worker coming to maintain the bathroom on Saturday and new tenants moving in the day after that. Agnes assured me a crew would come and work to get the sanding and first coat on, no matter how late they needed to stay.
On Thursday, the crew showed up and completed sanding and the first coat. I arrived home at 7:00 pm just as they were packing up and leaving. I peeked in on both floors, but since the floors were wet, we could not go into the spaces to investigate them closely. My husband noticed a few stains in the floor upstairs that hadn't been there prior to the work. I called the office to confirm that crew would show up to finish the job on Friday, and Peter (owner) called back to assure me they would be arriving around noon.
On Friday, the crew showed up around 2:00 after I called into the office to find out where they were. My husband showed the stains in the floor he had seen to Tom (head guy on the crew and the owner's son?). The crew was also a bit concerned with how the floor had dried overnight, but then started working. I called Agnes to ask about them working on a floor that wasn't quite dry enough. She talked to Peter, he (I believe) talked to the crew, and decided all was fine.
I arrived home late from work and did not go check on the floors. I knew couldn't walk on them anyway, so we waited to look at them until Saturday morning.
On Saturday, I went to see the floors. The finish coat looked fine. However, the stains my husband had noticed on Thursday were still there and now trapped under 2 coats of finish. In fact, there were at total of 28 stains throughout the apartment. The stains look like drops of dirty water or oil. Most are visible from across the room. They range in size from a dime to a silver dollar. Furthermore, all of the walls and trim in the apartment had scuffs and dirt marks on them. There were even some marks on the ceilings. Since we had JUST repainted and since our new tenants were arriving on Sunday afternoon, I was distraught. In our own kitchen, the floor looked fine. There were no stains like in the apartment, but there were a few rough spots where dust or fuzz had been trapped under the new finish. There were also dried drops of polyurethane on our counters and dishwasher. Our walls also had dirt marks and what looked to be a swipe of polyurethane on one (several feet off the floor).
I called the office right away and talked to Peter. I asked him to come out to see the space for himself. He tried to explain that the stains were embedded in the wood ("flaws in the wood") and could not be sanded out. I found this hard to understand as none of these stains had been visible before the refinishing. He said he would send Tom out to see things and that he would be here within 4 hours. In the meantime, I was so displeased, I called my bank and canceled all three checks I had written for the job.
Tom (if I understood Peter correctly) arrived; he said Peter was his father. He walked through the apartment with us and saw all the stains we had marked with sticky note flags. He explained that these stains were in the wood and could not be sanded out. He called his father and talked to him, and then he handed his phone to me so his father could talk to me. I was told that the sanding revealed the stains and the only way to fix the problem properly was to have the boards replaced (at additional cost to me). The job would take another 3 days. I was also told that the darkness of the spots would "fade" in the next week, month, and 3 months because since the floors had just been redone, the areas around the dark spots show much lighter than they will look as time goes on. Peter asked me to contact him after one month so he could come over and see how things had changed himself (although he wasn't there to see how they looked now).
After hanging up with Peter, I showed Tom all the marks on the walls and explained how we had just repainted and were expecting our new tenants the next day. He seemed appalled that his crews had been so careless. He took time to wipe down and scrub the marks on the walls and trim himself. Most of the marks came off with this cleaning, but not all. He did offer to do touch up painting, but by that point I felt like there wasn't much point and I'd just do it myself. I then took him down to the kitchen to show him the polyurethane drops, and he worked on wiping and scrapping them off our counters (which, luckily, are only laminate).
Before he left, I did write a new check for the full amount of the estimate, but I will NOT be hiring this company again.
My biggest overall complaints (aside from the general extra hassle and stress of this) are the communication issues and workmanship of the crews involved. As I explained to Peter and Tom, if the crew had taken the time to show my husband the staining problem when they saw it happening DURING the job, we would have had a much better understanding of the situation and could have made decisions then about whether to live with it or replace the boards. I still feel out of sorts about having not clear explanation for why no one showed up day one and why they didn't know about it even though my husband did call one of their numbers within the first hour of the crew being no-show. As regards all the dirt and marks on the walls/trim: I expected some. Refinishing is hard, dirty work, but the amount of dirt and the number of scraps seemed far too much. Also, if you drop polyurethane on a client's counters, why wouldn't you clean it up before it dried? I am still disappointed.