STATE OF THE ART WOOD FLOOR GALLERY

They were very pleasant at first, and presented themselves as a high-end floor installer. We had numerous problems with them, however. For starters, they simply failed to show up on the day they were supposed to lay down the hardwood. This was incredibly frustrating for my general contractor, who was scheduling his own work around the floor installation. They did a mixed job with laying down the floor; in most places it was okay but in other places they laid down damaged or short pieces. I ended having to go around with post-its and point to board that needed to be re-done. They didn't seem to know how to trim the edges for expansion; in some places they left so much space that the baseboard wouldn't cover it and in other places they left no space at all. The owner (Eric Herman) explained that the extra space is only needed next to the long sides of the boards and not on the short ends, so the crazy thing is that they made the expansion gaps in exactly the opposite direction so the floor would buckle in the summer. I was stunned that they didn't seem to know their own business; I got so frustrated with their inability to fix the problem that I paid my general contractor to trim the boards properly. Then they sanded and stained the floor, which came out so blotchy that the whole floor needed to be re-sanded and re-stained. I told the owner was nervous about having them mess it up again, but he assured me that he would personally supervise the work and that we would receive white-glove treatment. Well, the opposite happened. He sent over a couple of guys and told them to rush through the job, and never supervised them or even inspected the final result. The two workers were in such a rush that they nicked my brand-new kitchen cabinets with the sanding machine and left dark wood stain and piles of dust all over my newly painted apartment. The owner never saw this, but another manager came over and was absolutely appalled at the mess. To their credit, they covered the cost of re-painting the apartment but I would not want anyone else to have the experience we had. I really hope they've improved. This is 4 years later and the floor looks pretty good; it has a couple of squeaky places that are very annoying but the rest is fine so it could have turned out much worse.

Things started off well - they were nice when I went in to look for floors. They didn't have anything there that matched what I was looking for so they said they would order some samples and have them mailed to my house. I was available the following day and asked if it would be possible for someone to come give me an estimate. They said they would call the next day, which they did, but it was say they couldn't do the estimate then. Fine, I understood it was short notice, so SOTA said they would be beck in touch to schedule an appointment. Well, its been over a month now and I never heard from anyone and never received any samples.