Hardwood Floors from Hell
Our hardwood floor renovations comprised two phases: (1) refinishing our existing flooring (including both 85- and 18-year-old sections) and (2) installing new hardwood floors in our renovated kitchen and den.
Phase One went relatively smoothly, in retrospect. There were areas where the old wood needed to be replaced and the installer did a fine job. There was also one scuff mark which he quickly touched up. We did notice some sloppiness, areas where the stain dripped down onto the stair risers or brushed up onto the molding. But we plan to paint, so we didn’t complain, especially because the price on the work seemed much more reasonable than last time we’d done the floors. So far so good.
Until Phase Two. That’s the hellish part.
The drips of sloppiness in Phase One became a deluge in Phase Two, which, again, constituted new hardwood installations in the kitchen and den. It seemed almost predestined. For example, before the work even began, I was especially worried about stain splashing onto the new cabinetry in the kitchen. When I asked the installer why he wasn’t protecting the new peninsula and base cabinets with tape or plastic before staining the floors, he insisted it wasn’t necessary because “nothing ever happened” that would necessitate that. Until now, I guess.
Here is a pic of the damaged peninsula:
But it gets worse. As we were literally watching the polyurethane dry, we noticed what looked like transparent “brains” and “vertebrae” imprinted all over both the den and kitchen floors. On closer inspection, they turned out to be work-boot prints. Apparently, the installer’s workers had walked all over the floors after applying the finish on the assumption they were dry. They weren’t.
Here’s what it looked like:
Only they were all over both floors .....
But wait, there’s more: We also found hardened blobs of polyurethane on our existing hardwood floors (i.e., from the previously acceptable Phase One.) We're guessing that they tracked it over to the den after finishing in the kitchen. Here is what one of those looked like after they “cleaned it up”.
Obviously, we made clear to our GC that the work was unacceptable. To his credit, he responded by having his carpenter fabricate a trim to cover the floor stains on the peninsula. Toe-kick covered the stains on the lower cabinets. And the installer himself, also to his credit, acknowledged (with some colorful language) his fault and agreed to remove the footprints and blobs of polyurethane.
Easier said than done, apparently. For when his men came for Round Two to remove the footprints and polyurethane spills, they took something else off the floor too. And what that something is, we still don’t know. Nor can we get a straight answer about it from either our GC or the installer. All we know is that there are gaps and perforations or pits throughout the flooring in both the kitchen and den. Here is a sample pic of the unhappy result:
Again, these perforations, gaps and pits appear throughout both floors.
What’s to be done? The installer checked in today to make an appointment to come this week. But no promises. When I raised the question of how he’ll be able to fix the gaps and perforations between the planks, he said that maybe the changes in the weather caused the wood to contract. We aren’t buying it because this problem was apparent the moment they did the last round of “mediation,” and we have the pictures of the shortly before and shortly after to disprove it.
We’re guessing that when the workers came to remove the footprints, the machine they used sucked up some kind of filler between the wood, or perhaps removed too much polyurethane. But our background is in law, not wood flooring. We’re fervently hoping we don’t have to draw on our expertise to get this fixed.
Ahead of the installer’s “one more time” shot at making this right, we would be very grateful for any insights and advice from our fellow Houzzers.
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