Gerald's Wood Shed

My floors turned out beautifully! My only issue was that his guy left an ashtray full of cigarette butts on my front porch, and didn't put my curtains back up, as I hadn't moved into my house yet. My floors are as smooth as glass, and I would use Gerald again. His pricing is very fair, and he's a really nice fella.

When we moved into the house there was already hardwood flooring in the kitchen. We wanted to extend matching flooring into the family room, which was adjoining. The job was potentially tricky because the kitchen floorboards ran in the direction of the desired new floor, not perpendicular. Plus, there was a tricky diagonal transition. Gerald's installed a transition piece, and then installed the new floor so the boards aligned end-to-end perfectly (across the transition piece) with the boards in the existing kitchen floor.

Floors look beautiful, and would use them again. However, they did leave a few nails poking up and get some varnish on one of our non-wood floors.

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The floors are gorgeous and I am so glad we used this provider.  
I will go into some details.  We consulted Angies list first and GWS was at the top of the list.  We were leaning toward calling him anyway because his business is close to where we live and several of our neighbors had used him either to supply the wood to do it themselves or had him lay floors and stairs, and they have been very complimentary of his work.  One friend said they had him "clean up the mess" the first company they hired had made.  One thing I liked was that he is involved in everything from picking out the trees (really!  when we built our house we had him out to see if he would buy some maples we had to remove - he didn't take them as they were not the right kind of maple), to making the plank flooring, installing, varnishing, making the transition thresholds etc.  I really do not know how his prices compare except that the friend mentioned above said they initially went with someone else because the other company was "a little cheaper" - they were sorry in the end.  I marked the price as "good" because I am really not sure.  It seemed good to us because of the work of removing the parquet and some issues with a lot of closets that are time consuming.  We chose 'natural oak' which has more variation in color and is a bit more rustic looking - but not cabin grade by any means.  It was a little cheaper but we would have chosen it anyway for the 'look'.
That being said this was still expensive for us and that made us nervous homeowners.  Gerald took it in stride and tried to reassure us when there seemed to be a problem.  In fact all problems were very minor and easily corrected, and the results were spectacular.  He was very responsive to any concerns on our part.  The head of the sanding and varnishing and finishing of our project, John, was just a great guy and very conscientious as well as skilled.  One thing I learned was having a floor installed this way (not pre-varnished planks) is that it is an art and the results have something of that finely crafted look.  
I was helped by at least one negative comment in the reviews.  Expect dust.  It gets everywhere despite careful closing off of rooms.  It is very fine and gets in the furnace system and is spread all over. but especially on the floor where the work is done.  Because we expected this we bought really cheap plastic and covered everything before the sanding began and I am really glad we did.  When it was all over I had to even vacuum the walls.  I also ended up repainting - not because of any dust created by the project but because the walls looked so shabby compared to the beautiful floors.

First the positives.  The finished floor looks great.  Gerald's wood shed actually mills the flooring in his shop, to ensure the boards fit exactly together.  The wood grains look terrific.  The floor was white oak, then stain was applied along with three coats of polyurethane.  Each of the crew members I met were courteous. 

The reason for the low rating on professionalism and to not using them again is due to several points.  When I met Gerald, I asked him how to make sure wood dust does not spread to other rooms in the house.  He told me this would not be a problem, since a plastic barrier would be placed by the door to keep the wood dust contained.  I went down to check out the work after the floor was installed but before the urethane coats were complete.  I immediately noticed wood dust throughout the first floor of the house - on the floor, on furniture, in the master bathroom, everywhere!  Gerald arrived and said "sorry about the wood dust, we couldn't figure out how to turn the air conditioner on".  He explained this was important when applying stain because any drips of sweat would discolor the finish.  I asked him why he did not call me to get instructions on the AC, and he just shrugged his shoulders.  He has our Indianapolis number since he's called me at least twice.  Yesterday the job was complete with a workman installing the shoe molding.  I asked about the wood dust on the main floor.  He said that one of the crew members came by to dust shelves, etc.  Any work that was done was minimal as wood dust remained throughout the first floor of the house.  After he left, I noticed several other points.  The bedroom door they removed to install the wood floor was not rehung.  A window screen that had been removed was not rehung.  A part of the metal floor AC vent was bent out when the floor was installed and now the grate cover does not fit.

To summarize, I love the floor, but not the mess they made, particularly since I asked in advance about the wood dust.  To make it right, I would have expected Gerald to offer to have the first floor of the home to be thoroughly swept and dusted after the furniture is moved back into the bedroom.

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It turned out great!  It took about three days which is exactly what they told us.  The final result is beautiful.  The crew was very professional.  A piece of quarter-round was misplaced somehow during the process, so they got a replacement and painted it for us; you can't tell the difference.  For this price, we are so glad that we didn't try to do this ourselves!

Fabulous! Gerald was prompt in giving me an estimate, when he could start work, when he would be done. Everything was a promised.

The job went well. Gerald milled the wood himself, including walnut pegs to match our existing oak floor. His crew worked hard and did a good job. They taped off the room, which eliminated the spread of saw dust.
Gerald went to pains to use the same finish as was used on our existing floors. That generated a glitch. One benefit of thoroughly taping off the room is that the crew can spray on the top coat. In our case, the chosen stain refused to take the sprayed topcoat. Gerald switched to rolling the first topcoat?the process that had been used throughout on our existing floors. That solved the problem and the crew was able to go back to spraying the second and third coats. The experience was a good exercise in seeing how someone responds to an unanticipated problem. Gerald?s response was just what it should have been.

Gerald's team installed a beautiful new oak floor in a bedroom to match existing hardwood in the hallway outside the room. We had removed the wall-to-wall carpet & tack strips from the room ourselves to save $$.
     Gerald's installer arrived right on schedule on a Monday to begin the installation. The work they did was just exactly what I wanted, and the resulting floor is beautiful. Gerald and his team are careful and maintain top quality. They were prompt and polite. When my electrician took longer one day than expected, preventing the first coat of finish from being applied that day, Gerald was flexible about adding a day to the schedule to compensate. The work was initially scheduled to be finished on Friday (the same week they started), but instead was finished the following Monday--still well within my framework of getting the larger room project completed on time.
     Only problem I had was this: The subfloor in the room was about 1/4 inch lower than expected. We had had this problem when we had hardwood installed in another bedroom on the same hallway, and I had discussed the possibility with Gerald when he came to estimate the project that an additional layer of subfloor might need to be added to bring the new floor flush with the hallway hardwood. On the first day, however, the installer was not prepared for this possibility (the need to install an additional layer of subfloor, which was indeed necessary), so they had only some fairly expensive plywood from their shop to lay to bring the flooring up to the proper level. This is the only part of the job that I wish had been handled differently; I think Gerald had just forgotten about the possible need for the extra later, and so I wound up paying a bit more than I would have had he brought or had on hand a less expensive subfloor material.
    Nonetheless, I would recommend Gerald's Wood Shed to anyone interested in a top-quality professional hardwood installation. And I will not hesitate to hire them again when I need my other flooring refinished (which will be later this year or next year).

The price for solid cherry over such a large space (about 1600 square feet) was very reasonable - much lower than the quote we got from another local company for installing pre-finished floorboards. The end result is beautiful: the wood itself is gorgeous, the finish is smooth, and there is little to no gapping between floor boards. Gerald and his crew were prompt, hard working, and courteous, they kept to their quoted price for all the work we initially asked for, and they helped us solve some unexpected problems that came up during the installation. The only negative part of the experience is that the first time they applied the polyurethane coating, something contaminated it, producing little dimpled indentations in the floor's finish. Gerald recognized the problem and was unhappy with the quality of the finish, so he had the crew sand the top coat of poly and reapply a new coat. It set back the timeframe for when we could move in by almost a week, but it did fix the problem, and Gerald didn't charge extra for the repair. Overall, I'm very happy with my experience with Gerald's Wood Shed. I'd hire them again, and I'd recommend them to friends.

Gerald is genius!  He made my dream floor a reality.  His workers were on time, professional and talented.  Highly recommend!

They did a good job.  They tried to be unobtrusive, thoroughly protected other parts of house from dust and debris, and cleaned up.

They were a great crew.  Prompt, very courteous, explained everything to my satisfaction.  They went above and beyond when trying to install matching shoe molding along the baseboards.  The original molding had been removed in the 70s to install carpet.  They were very diligent in trying to get as close a color match as possible to the baseboards.  
 
They worked hard, quickly and did a very good cleanup afterwords.

The work was completed as promised. I think it could have been done a little better. There was some damage to the new boards when they were installed. Luckily I was planning to cover them with carpet.  They were friendly.

The job was very well done, with a minimum of mess.  The overall price was high but that was because the job was small, so the overhead was large for the overall size.  In other words, I could have had a much larger area done for essentially the same cost.  I did know the cost ahead of time and agreed to it, so that is not a complaint.

He did what he said he would do. He got in and got out. Maybe could have contained the dust a little better, but pretty hard to control all of it. Was flexible enough to work around other contractors who were not so good at predicting finish dates. Excellent quality materials and installation.

Gerald and his guys did flawless work. I am so pleased with the result and the entire experience of working with him was a pleasure. My only complaint was that the job wasn't finished by our agreed upon deadline, but the work was so impeccable that I quickly got over it.

Despite hitting a pipe while installing flooring around the kitchen plumbing area, and causing a major clean-up and delay (and huge headaches for us), they did a great job and were very solicitous about their error and taking care of its repair. We probably could have more of the final price reduced (because the mistake did cost us a lot of time and effort), but Gerald's concern and the quality of their finished product was so good that it was hard to take it out on them!

Gerald 's crew did a fine job on the installation and finishing. The matching of old and new was perfect.
Gerald was quick to respond to questions that arose and handled the issues in a professional manner.
Would hire again.

The work was done well and on schedule. The installers were careful, hardworking, and pleasant. The joints were straight and tight. The flooring in the closets was installed with the same care as the rest of the flooring.
Our layout was non-trivial. At each end of a hall the flooring met a bedroom's flooring at right angles. We used no thresholds. Because the lengths of the flooring boards will never match the length of a hall, only one of the two joints could employ the flooring's tongue-and-groove feature. The installers had to cut the hall boards at the other joint precisely to length and precisely square, with no room for error. They did.
We were particularly impressed with Gerald?s straightforward approach to pricing, i.e., $2.50 per square foot actually installed. There was no charge for staples, supplies, or incidentals. We had measured the area precisely and Gerald confirmed our square-footage figure. In contrast, when the independent contact installer recommended by our flooring source measured the area he came up with a significantly higher square-foot figure. He also added a percentage for scrap to the billable area. In the final analysis, we would have multiplied his $3.00/sq ft price by almost 100 square feet more than were actually installed. We also would have paid a not-insignificant charge for staples, supplies, or incidentals.
Another way Gerald saved us money was with his underlayment recommendation. The other bidder recommended a very nice underlayment that ran about $.50/square foot. Gerald recommended that inasmuch as in our installation there is no purpose to the underlayment other than to reduce friction, we go with a roll of painter?s rosin paper. A 500 sq-ft roll cost $12.95 at Menards--less than .03/sq ft.
Gerald?s crew did an excellent job for about 60% of the cost of the option that first presented itself.