I do not recommend With the Grain Professional Hardwood Flooring. Tom Grimes is very unresponsive and impossible to reach. It takes at least three emails or texts to get a response, if he responds. He is unprofessional and continuously apologetic but does not do anything to correct this business practice. He over-promises and has proved to under-deliver. Once he was paid he did not care about the job, even if it is wrong.
In October 2018, we decided to extend our wood floors into the kitchen. Tom Grimes, With the Grain Professional Hardwood, came to the house and said he could finish our kitchen and he was pretty sure he still had the color from our other floor previously finished.
Tom said this job shouldn’t take more than 3 days. It has now been 13 months as of Nov 2019 and we are still trying to get the floor complete.
Here is the story.
Tom came in and laid the floor and stained it the wrong color. When we told him it was the wrong color he said all he needed to do was scuff/sand it and add in a bit of red. He came back and did the most unprofessional job adding the red.
1. He did not use plastic or anything to clean the area to ensure it was free of debris.
2. He didn’t move the appliances.
3. He didn’t tape off the area and got the red stain on my new kitchen cabinets and dishwasher.
4. He didn’t even add the color to the entire floor since he didn’t move anything. We were planning to get a gas stove when all was finished. We are still waiting to get a gas stove.
5. The stain dried with roller debris and dog hair in it. Leaving the entire floor to look sloppy.
6. He dripped some sort of finishing agent on the other part of our hardwood floor as he was leaving.
After this visit, we had him out twice to talk and clean up the other part of the mess. We (Tom and us) decided the best course of action was to start over with a clean slate. He was scheduled to come on May 9th and sand/restain our kitchen floor.
The day he was scheduled (9 May 19) he didn’t show. He did not answer text messages or phone calls. After three hours from his scheduled arrival time he texted and said his wife was in an accident and we needed to reschedule. Tom ended up getting another contractor over the next day to finish the floors. Arnez and Brandon of Good Guys flooring came over and did a great job, until they moved the refrigerator back and water leaked under the refrigerator causing the wood to warp.
We told Tom and Arnez about the warped wood, both said we needed to let the wood dry. In July we began correspondence to get our floor fixed. Now the wood is dry and in order to ensure the stain matches, the floor needs to be taken back to the beginning and re-stained again.
There are 16 emails, (not including text messages) between July 24 and Sep 25 trying to get in touch with Tom to have him fix the floor. The first of the sixteen, Tom thought we were a completely different client.
