Premier Custom Flooring

Overall, PHF was comparable on price and they were the most competent of any provider I spoke with. They were not just selling flooring - they were educated and communicated with the appropriate depth of complexity and detail as the situation required.  I will call them again when we do some tile in the entry/kitchen, and I have no problem recommending them.

Now the details:

I worked with Brandon at their Avon store when selecting the floor. He was professional and educated on his product. He was patient with our decision making process and allowed us to take several samples for multiple days. We were not pressured to one brand or another, we were not pressured to a higher margin item and we were not 'up sold.' I feel he was very fair and trustworthy, and this is why we went with Premier Hardwood.

The team who measured our project area was very prompt, ready and willing to answer many questions and proposed great ideas on how to have a more finished look by turning a board at the transition from tile to hardwood.

Installers were a little late both days. It would have been a bigger deal if I had less flexibility with my job, but their hours were within reason. They arrived before 9:00 each day - I had hoped they would be closer to 8:00. They were very friendly, kept me up to speed on how installation was going and kept the house clean by placing drop cloths. As requested they kept the ends of the boards close to the wall, and this allowed me the option to use show trim or just to use only the new baseboard.

After a few weeks of inspection I have noticed only one area where the floor makes any kind of noise. I believe one section did not make good contact with the adhesive and I have a slight pop. It is not critical.

I had only two issues, and I want every reader to understand that I consider them minor; definitely not things that would keep me from calling this provider in the future

1:  The floor was not glued in accordance with the adhesive manufacturer's recommendations or UrbanFloor recommendations.

I have a problem of doing too much research before choosing a service, and as a result I looked long and hard at glue options. Based on the surface area of the floor and the thickness of the wood being laid the installer should have used a TR-7 trowel to meet DriTac 7500 specifications. Based on the quantity of glue used/remaining after the job it is likely that they used a TR-6 trowel (increasing the coverage from 35 sq. ft. per gallon to 50 sq. ft. per gallon). This resulted in me having almost 3/4 a pail of unused glue. At $170-ish per pail (3 or 4 gallons) this was kind of a bummer. On the flip side, if they had used the other trowel I would have needed another pail, so the cost would have gone up.

Has the floor popped up because there was less glue? No. Will it? probably not. Overall, I'm not that worried.

I also read up on the installation instructions for UrbanFloor while considering doing the install myself. To prevent wood spreading out it is recommended that the boards be taped together while glue cures. This was not done. Fortunately it did not result in any gaps that I have noticed.  They also recommend running a weighted roller over the installation to ensure good adhesion to the glue. I have no way to know if this was done but as stated before there is a board that does not appear to be fully glued down. Still, there is only one board where there was an issue.

2:  The floor had more than a couple tacky thumb prints and glue smears from installation. Glue is surely a pain in the butt to keep off things, but I found many locations where there were smears, streaks etc. from glue not being removed with a solvent. This made some dull spots on the floor. I have managed to scrape them off with my finger nail but these spots lack the same luster as the rest of the floor. This was not reckless abandon of care - I want to reiterate that the installers were very clean and did a good job. I just really wish they would have caught the glue spots and cleaned them.

Very good. Very little dust, if any. The job was done in 2 days.

My wife and I never imagined how good these floors would look, but we are beyond satisfied. From the quote to the four days of work, everyone we dealt with at Premier were professional and helpful. We certainly will use them again when we go to refinish our floors upstairs. We highly recommend Premier Harwood.

Several things, in order of event:  
Rob (may be the owner) came, he seemed very
knowledgeable so I trusted everything he had to say. We wanted to match the
existing hardwood flooring in the entry with the new office. He picked what he
said was the match and said he could even weave it in so it looked like it was
always there. Awesome! He said, order this wood, we will need 12 boxes (each
one a bit over $200). Ok sounds good, done.
On install day some 20 something-year old came to
install. Up to this point I had only worked with Rob, so I assumed he'd be
doing my install, just would have been nice for him to tell me that it wasn't
him doing the install (when he talked about the install it was all 1st person
singular "I", never plural "we"). But ok, it was an easy
install so I could overlook that.
Part way into the install, the installer told me
he didn't recommend that I weave because it wasn't that close of a match,
something Rob should have caught.  Boy
was he right, after the install I noticed the installed hardwood floor was kind
of close but not a match and the gloss on it was way way off (my hall way was
high gloss, this new install was low), again, something that wasn't pointed out
to me by the expert Rob.
I could over look all of that and give these guys
a B grade, if that was the end, because I will be putting in a door, so the
off-colors won't be terribly obvious.  HOWEVER, when I look to see what's left over there is 1.5 boxes of
unused hardwood left over.  OK so half of a box or even 9/10ths of an
extra box is going to happen. But 1.5 extra boxes?! I have a completely extra
unused box, on top of the half unused. Which means I paid >$200 more than I
had to, because this expert didn't measure properly.  
The response to this post will probably be that he
needed the extra box in case we did a weave. But any novice can see that the
word is so far off of a match that a weave would NEVER be advisable. In other
words, he should NEVER have even made that an option for me and shouldn?t have
ordered that extra box.  But also to rebut
that  point, that extra half a box left
over would have been MORE than enough to weave (should it have been a
match).  Case and point, their #1 guy
could accurately measure a simple square room with no weird cut-outs.

Luckily for the workers, the house was empty, so they didn't have to move furniture.  Was given several choices of stain, didn't like any of them, so they mixed two of the colors together and got the color to somewhat match existing 50 year old woodwork.  Had to install shoemolding since it had been removed when carpeting had been installed.

Gave price a B as they were the most expensive of the three estimates I received, but I'd seen their work elsewhere and decided to go with them.

They did an excellent job. They installed in the time they discussed and cleaned up afterward. They were very professional, reasonably priced, and stuck to their quote. The crew was on time, professional, and thorough. The floor look wonderful. I would recommend them to anyone.

Multiple friends warned us not to use this company. They told us that we would be impressed with the professionalism of the salesman, but disappointed in the workmanship. This proved to be true. I have waited months to write this review in hopes of my anger decreasing enough to give a fair review. We had multiple issues: 1) The crew insisted on placing my furniture in the basement despite my objection. They put the furniture in an unfinshed section of the basement. They did not cover the furniture to protect it. Because of that, the solvent that they used during the finishing process dripped down and destroyed the finish on several pieces of my furniture. 2) They turned a brand new table upside down and slid it over another table scratching the finish off when storing the furniture. 3) The final finish had mutliple areas where dirt and hair were underneath the finish. It was very poorly executed with very little attention to detail. 4) We stayed off the floors for the indicated period of time told to us by Rob the owner of the company. Immediately after walking on the floors once this period was over the finish began coming off. The finish came off on a towel when I would wash the floors. We had painters come in AFTER BEING TOLD IT WAS SAFE TO HAVE THEM WORK BY ROB and it made matters even worse. We asked multiple times why we were have the issue with the finish. No explanation was ever given other than the suggestion they take off the top layer of finish and do it again. We were reluctant to do this without a reason on why the finish was coming up and no guarantee that this would solve the problem. We had already been living in our master bedroom for 4 weeks while this project was being done. We called in THREE other flooring speicalists who ALL gave us the same reason on why we were having this problem. The wrong product was used in finishing the type of floor we had put down. Premier refused to accept any responsibility for any of the issues....even the simplest that they failied to protect the furniture that they placed in the basement which we have been told is "flooring 101". We choose to cut our losses and we paid and additional $5000.00 to another company to finish the floors correctly. We have had absolutely no issue since and that was completed in late November, 2009 (five months ago). It is impossible that Premier used the correct finishing product when every single other company we called offered the same opinion as to what our problem was, and one of them was able to correct it by simply using that other product. Please do not waste your money with Premier.

They were excellent. The reason we went with them is because they were the only place we found that would install unfinished hardwood (unstained). They then showed us roughly 100 stains/shades that we could pick, and we narrowed it down to about 5 different stains that we liked. They painted a 3' x 4' section of stain in different areas of the floor so we could see what each looked like in the room. We then picked one. They sanded away the four we didn't pick, and stained the whole floor with our stain. It was nice because we could see what it looked like in the house, under the lighting in the room, without just going to a warehouse and taking a wild guess as to what it would look like in the home. The employees and the workers were really nice, and really tolerant of little kids that were curious about their big, loud machines. They were one of the cheapest quotes we got. I was really surprised because they install the natural wood, which I thought was a better process anyway. We did have one issue about two weeks after the floor had been installed. We have a wood window frame in the room where the floor was installed, and I noticed a spot that one of their machines must have nicked. I called, and they came out the next day and fixed it free of charge.

They were a very timely company, they always came when they said and finished right on time. That was important because we pretty much had to move out for the project. The project only took four days. The workers kept everything clean and paid respect to the house. The finished product looks great. They did have to come back to do a touch up but they did it in a timely manner. Working with this company was a good experience.

The experience was horrible. We were on a vacation. The neighbor let the contractor in. The original contract was for $2050.00, that was removal, installation and trim. He called us while we were on vacation to tell us that he should have charged us double or he would not be installing the trim. When we got home he did not contain the mess and I had dust all over my house and blinds. I had to wash everything, my canned goods, dishes, everything. I was so upset that I waited several days to call him back and his comment was "if it is not that you want to pay, I will put a lean on your house." The next day he called and took $250 off the project and expected me to pay that day. The experience was terrible and I am so displeased at the filth and him not completing his work. It doesn't even feel there is a seal on the floor. The magnitude of the filth was just horrendous. My dinning room set was so filthy; I had to clean it with a small brush in all the nooks and crannies. My chandelier was broken when we got back and he blamed it on my child. He had 4 other workers in my house that he did not tell me about. We noticed broken tiles and a chipped sink in the bathroom. Now I have to hire someone to stain the trim, and now I have had to pay out more money than what was expected. He does not hold true to his contract, and he underbids. If you do not pay right away or agree to the new price, he will put a lean on your property.

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