AJ Hardwoods

I give Dave high marks for responsiveness.  He answered his phone and I was able to get an appointment quickly.  The price seemed very fair given the square footage that was being refinished.  Perhaps most importantly, there were a couple of places where I wasn't happy with the finish, and Dave came back promptly to address them.  There are a lot of stories about non-responsive contractors out there, but this isn't one of them.

On the downside, be prepared for a fine layer of dust to settle on every horizontal surface.  I don't know if there is truly a dust-free way to refinish a floor, but this wasn't it.  I saw bags of sawdust taken outside, so he captured 98% of it, but there was still a sizable clean-up job after he was done.  In my case, that was simplified because there was no furniture in the house.  If you can't remove your furniture and window treatments, you should definitely attempt to cover them with plastic before the sanding begins.

The other problem was that the sander rubbed paint off the quarter-round in places.  Dave did not repair that before he left.  If I had insisted he do it, he probably would have, but I decided to do it myself because it isn't that difficult.  Some touch-up paint, a brush, and a couple of hours should have everything ship-shape again.  If you have painted woodwork, you should talk with him about this before he starts.  Some masking tape on the baseboards/quarter-round might prevent the problem altogether.

Update (December 28, 2013): With the move-in complete and the holidays behind us, we started the touch-up painting.  As it turns out, the damage to the baseboards is far worse than I originally estimated.  The edge sander actually gouged much of the quarter-round, and it scratched the porcelain off the base of a toilet and a pedestal sink.  There were also multiple places where the polyurethane splashed onto the baseboards or the bathroom fixtures.  We called Dave and asked him to address these problems, but it was well after the fact and he had already been paid.  His response was essentially that such problems are to be expected.  The bulk of the work was fine, but the details around the edges left a lot to be desired.

I contacted a carpet store about putting wood on my stairs which were carpet covered, but they referred me to AJ Hardwoods. I called immediately and they came for an estimate. We made an agreement on price and they returned and did the work in a timely fashion. I'm thrilled with my new floors. He actually used a higher grade of wood at the same cost for me.

They were excellent. They were able to exactly match the existing hardwood flooring. You can't tell which had been there for 86 years and which had just been installed. They were responsive and stood behind their original quote.