We are in the process of refinishing our wood floors....our 100 yr. old, probably never been refinished EVER, wood floors.  It has not been smooth sailing.  We hired a young man (ok, 40ish, but young to us) who has been doing this work for over 20 yrs. but was fairly new to the area.  We spoke to him in March (?) felt very comfortable with him and settled on June to do the job.  He didn't have a 'crew' so gave us a time line of 2 weeks to get it done.  We rented a storage facility starting in May because we basically had to empty the house. 

In June, after a couple of 'delays' on our part....the work began.  In the interim, Matt had hired 2 guys as his crew and one of them, Chris, showed up to start the job.  We trusted Matt and figured Chris would be doing the 'easier' parts and that Matt would supervise. Chris was a very nice man who was excited about the job and told us how much we were going to "love the finished product".  He started on Tuesday, June  .  

Chris sanded for 2 days, lots of noise, lots of dust, then wood puttied the entire floor.  I had some misgivings about using wood putty, but was assured by Matt that, "this wasn't stuff you bought at Home Depot" and would look great in the end. It didn't.  I hated it.  Steven tolerated it.  Matt was offended that we questioned his expertise and said that "everybody, every floor, got wood puttied".  After having a complete meltdown, lots of tears on my part, little sleep for 2 nights and much research on the internet (puttying is standard for some, a big NO for others) we decided that ship had sailed and there really wasn't much we could do but accept it. 

Moving on.  We had a LOT of stains (cats?) in the extra/purple room and had decided to go with a dark stain on the floors to hide them.  BUT....after the first coat of stain was put down, by Chris, it reacted to half the floor in a completely unacceptable way. It was a mess.  Big swipes of almost black and no wood grain showing thru.  It 'appeared' as tho Chris had put in on and not wiped it off quick enough...tho he said he had, and half the room did look great.  Chris called Matt to show him the problem...sent pics...and they decided he should resand the floor and wait for Matt to take a look....the next day. 

We decided overnight that we would go natural in that room rather than make another attempt at staining....to avoid a possible 3rd sanding.  Before we could even suggest that, Matt made the same suggestion.  He said it must be something with "our floors."  Maybe he didn't want to blame Chris....maybe he just wanted to get to his other job. It was obvious he didn't want to take the time to figure out the problem and we were uneasy about another sanding so we all agreed to skip the stain. Chris had been pretty much left alone on our job and up till now that 'seemed' fine.  But this goof made us wonder. Were we truly getting the best possible job from Matt.  

The next day,  Matt finally showed up to do some work.  The patch job Chris did on an area where our old floor heater once was....a job that required boards be taken out and replaced, was not up to his standards, so he redid it....and then it wasn't up to ours (wrong color boards....VERY light next to VERY dark and it looked like stripes) so he did it again.  We picked out the boards and it ended up perfect.  He also helped repair a long gap that ran right in front of our bedroom door and was almost 1/4 inch wide.  The wood putty was obviously NOT working in that spot and because of the movement of the floor every time it was stepped on, it wasn't going to stay put. Matt seemed to think a few more coats of the putty would be fine...but Steve did a bit of research and decided it needed a sliver of wood because of the width.  He cut the wood, using some scraps we had and glued it in.  Matt helped finish it off. Best TWO decisions we'd made so far was insisting on having him do the patch job over and putting in the shim instead of using wood patch.  It pissed Matt off (he tried not to show it...but he was obviously losing patience with us/ME at that point) but we're so glad we pushed for that.  

I should add that part of the reason I was on Matt's bad side was that I had texted him questioning why HE wasn't on the job.  I said that considering the 'issues' we'd had it seemed like he was being remiss in not showing up DAILY to at least check on Chris's work.  Especially since we found out that Chris had 4 MONTHS of experience.  We were sold 20yr. of experience....we got 4 months. 

Moving on.  After all the fixes, Chris (again, alone) came 3 days in a row to do the poly.  Matt dropped by on day 2 to day to pick up his equipment and the remainder of what we owed him..took a cursory look around and left.  Chris finished the 3rd coat and that was it.  No final walk-thru, no double-checking to make sure the job was up to his standards....nothing. 

I did make the mistake of walking on the floors, which seemed dry, too early....and managed to step in a spot where the poly had obviously been put on too thick (you could see a big swipe that was made by the applicator).  I apologized and asked for Matt's help in fixing the spot.  I figured he could just come by and wipe on a bit more poly and ...ta da....all would be well.  He promised to do just that...or, rather, he said he would TRY to get by the next week.  I also told him about several areas...more than a few...that were gritty, and some places where the poly didn't seem to even be applied....missed spots.  I asked for advice on how to fix those areas.  He never answered that question, but since he said he'd be over to fix my goof, I figured I'd ask him then.  A week went by and NO word from him.  I waited until Sunday to see what was going on and if he'd have time to stop by.  No response. I text again on Monday. No response. Again on Tuesday.  Finally, he texts back that he is SO busy that he "won't be able to make it there afterall." But that he can SELL us a can of the poly and show Steve how to apply it. I tell him fine, can he get it there on Wednesday because (as I've said several times) we NEED TO GET IT DOWN ASAP as it has a 2 week curing time.  He says he will be there Wed. Wednesday comes and Wednesday goes.  No show on Matt....and of course, no text. I wait to text again until Friday because Wilson was here on Thursday and didn't really want to interrupt our visit.  His response on FRIDAY....12 days from when we asked for help on this spot...was that he was OUT OF POLY and could only get it in Fresno. Sigh.  We had been in Fresno the previous Saturday and would happily have picked up a couple of quarts. 

Then the texts got ugly. I told him that the reason we needed him to come by was to advise us on issues that were substandard.  He replies that "all he can do is recoat all the floors at his usual rate."  So we've now gone from us just needing advice on repairs to his offering AT FULL COST to redo all three rooms.  I think at this point he realized that Chris had not done as good a job as should have been done and he'll do one final coat to fix it all.  BUT we have to pay for it.  And I said just that.  I basically questioned the integrity of someone who expected us to PAY to get the job finished CORRECTLY...and I told him that maybe he should have stopped by AFTER the final coat to see if the job was done to his normal standards...because we felt it hadn't been.  He basically responded by saying it was my fault because he had asked me not to go in till the next day (not true). I said it wasn't about ONE SPOT...it was the entire job that was substandard.  I said we hired HIM to do the job...but HE didn't...

After all this, he finished by offering to do a final coat of the entire house (3 rooms) for nothing....because he wanted to make it right.  BUT that he would not talk to me again and would only deal with Steve.  OK...sure.  Weirdly, I had no intention of him doing another coat.  We didn't expect that....or think it was needed.  We just wanted advice....ADVICE ...on how to fix the issues...of which there were many.  We would've been ok with that. Not sure why he went from completely trying to brush us off to offering to do the job for free...but maybe being a bitch has it's perks.  

Anyway, at this point, we're not even sure we're going to take him up on his offer.  We have a friend who used to do floors and we've asked him to come over and take a look at the job and give us his opinion on how to move forward.  There are definitely areas that need to be fixed...repolyed...including my goof....but we're not sure the whole floor need to be redone. We'll see. 

....to be continued.