Refinisher I hired having problems & complaining...should I bail?

16 years ago

I have a general contractor who represented that refinishing our old hardwood floors would be no problem. Our prior contractor said the floors would never look right...in front of this new contractor...and then the challenge became a passion. Now I'm getting calls every day complaining how the red oak boards aren't meshing well in the places where the original floor boards had buckled and were removed. Every day it's one problem or another, which seems to me like an excuse to hike up the fees way above the estimate. I was not convinced our floors could be repaired and refinished from the start...they had never been appreciated by owners as hardwood and were all covered either in ugly vinyl or carpeting. The floors are 1950 vintage...but they had been patched along the way due to what looks like fire damage (the patch jobs were put in with masonry nails, of all things...just really bad treatment of the floors for decades!) Now that the person I've contracted to do the floors is being so negative, I'm wondering if I should bail out. I do not have deep pockets as I'm winding up a total house renovation that included two walls demo'ed, all windows replaced, bathroom and kitchen tiling, and more. I wonder if I should just carpet the whole dang thing; wall to wall doesn't thrill me and I don't think it's environmentally friendly either. But what options are cost-effective at this point to get the floors to where I can move in?

I'm so dejected after this third contractor representing that things could be achieved that apparently weren't achievable. (And don't get me started on the lousy plumber who left the gas line open and could have had our house blow up because of his laziness not tightening things down right.) What to do, what to do? Should I fire this contractor who doesn't seem to know how to rehab floors after all? I've been way too tolerant of contractors, from the one who in writing promised to complete a list of tasks in 3 weeks and took 3 months...to this current one who said the floors would be "no problem, don't worry" and now whines about them every day. Why are contractors out there seemingly incompetent while always acting over-confident?

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Comments (2)

glennsfc
16 years ago
Guess they don't want the competition to get the work and then find themselves in over their heads...just a guess.

Or, maybe the new guy realizes now that your floor will never look good enough to please you or him.
frankjones5
16 years ago
I always wonder why people hire contractors for big jobs without really knowing how they will work. Speaking as a contractor there are certain clues that will tell you if they are good or not.
Do they communicate well? Do they call you back in a timely manner? Do they show up on time and, if they don't, do they let you know ahead of time?

Do they keep the job site clean? Very important.

How do they handle changes in scope and unforeseen job site conditions? The good ones will warn you ahead of time about the conditions they can not predict and have some sort of agreement in place about what to do if conditions turn out badly. In Philadelphia I often run into botched previous renovations that structurally compromise the home. I tell people what the job will cost if everything inside the walls looks good. Then I tell them what might be inside the walls (termite damage, bad wiring, structural deficiencies, etc.) and we agree on what to do if I find something bad. I want to find the problems early so that neither the customer nor I are locked into an unrealistic job scope.

Basically I build in an out for the customer if there is a problem. The contractor you hired should have done a test first.

Also it is good to hire someone for a small part of the job first before hiring them for the big part.
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Refinisher I hired having problems & complaining...should I bail?

Comments (2)

glennsfc

frankjones5

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