Super duper frustrated!!

a little background
last summer we had some contractors/ flooring people give us quotes for hardwood in our family room, kitchen, and living room. they all came in the same, but one guy also did granite counter tops and we wanted those done too, so we went with him.

he seemed smart at the time :) he told us that we had different flooring in our entry way and dining room, one was macro and one was micro, and that we wanted to go with micro for the rest of the house. sounded good to us. i asked if he could match the floors in our entry and dining rooms and his response was " no problem." we never got into any more discussion from it. he never told us that the finish would be hard to match, he never asked if we knew the manufacturer, or if we had any of the old wood hanging around. just " no problem."

in sept, right after the baby was born, we signed the contract with him to do the work. he showed us a sample at the store, and talked about matching the color and we agreed to the butterscotch. i ASSumed that the finish would be matched as well, that he had written it down some where, or something along those lines. since he never mentioned that it would be an issue, i never knew to ask if it was going to be one. :(

after the family room was installed, it was OBVIOUS that the floors did not match. at 830p i was talking to the crew chief about it. i showed him where the old floors ended and the new ones began and how you could see that the new floors were a matte finish. pretty, but not the same. he said he'd call the boss at home right then, but i told him we'd call in the morning. there was no reason to bother him at home at almost 9p. they still had to come back the next day to finish our living room. we called the next morning about the mismatched floors and the boss's daughter gave us a quote of 1200.00 to replace the old wood with the new stuff. that wasn't what we wanted to do because we didn't feel like it was our fault. we were told they would match, and they didn't. they did not tell us about the inability to match a finish until we called and pestered them for almost 2!!! weeks. after 2 weeks we were told that it was nearly impossible to match finishes. the boss finally came out to our house to look at them. he told us too that it was nearly impossible to match finishes. that even with the manufacturers info it's hard. WELL, that would've been nice to know BEFORE we agreed to the floors and had them installed!!!!

HIS solution was to apply a coat of polyurethane to the new floors to get them shiny like the old ones. we agreed to this, and things just got worse after that. the company sent out a guy by himself. he didn't sand or clean the floors at all. he simply put one single coat of oil based polyurethane down and said, " don't walk on the floors for 24 hrs." the boss had originally told us to stay off the floors for 8 hrs. SO, we stayed off of them for 56 hrs. mind you we couldn't really use our family room or our kitchen during this time. after 56 hrs we decided to have our ritual movie night with the kids and attempted to bring our tv back in. immediately we realized the the polyurethane was peeling off of the floor everytime we moved something. steve was able to leave his thumb print and i was able to leave and sock mark, heal print, AND peel more polyurethane up by rubbing my toe on the floor. it was shocking and aggravating!!!

we started calling the company and after about 2.5 weeks, again, they finally sent someone out to look at it. they sent joe, a floor specialist. basically, he told us that they ruined the floors by doing what they did. that they never should've even offered polyurethane as a solution. he went on to tell us that his recommendation would be to sand the entire first floor and refinish it all at the same time, and that we would need to be out of our house for 1-2 weeks. WE wanted the floors torn up and relayed, but he said you start to mess with the integrity of what is underneath when you do that. we did NOT agree to the sanding and refinishing, he said he'd have the boss's daughter call us to talk.

so, they never called. a week later we called and the boss said that we agreed to have the sanding and refinishing done and they were just waiting for us to set the date for that. i told him we hadn't agreed and that we had questions, mostly where were we supposed to go for 1-2 weeks? what were we going to do with all of our furniture if the entire first floor was being sanded and refinished? how were they going to contain the mess? what was OUR guarantee that they were not going to mess up the job again. the first job was done HORRIBLY. there were streaks and bubbles and areas missing everywhere. a very chop job.

steve called him after i did and basically the boss said he would answer no more of our questions and hung up.

we wrote them a letter and got a second opinion. the second opinion said the same thing. do the entire first floor to make sure you don't have ridges and lines. and that we would need to be out of the house, furniture included, for 1-2 weeks. the second opinion included things like the shoe moldings and closing up ducts and the second story to contain the dust that will be EVERYWHERE with a job like this!

they wrote back and their letter was full of lies. we addressed their lies with another letter. we filed with the BBB, and they addressed our filing, with even more lies. we had a friend here when the boss stopped by and discussed what to do about the mismatched floors. he said that he chose that finish because we have 4 small children and it is a great finish for hiding scratches and what not. he said that, we have a witness, she addressed his comment to him stating that, choosing the finish was not his call to make. in their letter to the BBB they said they never talked to us about that, that they don't know where we got that information, and that it was of no relevence since they did not do that. GRRR!!!! i hate being called a liar, when i DO NOT LIE.

the letter has lots of other lies in it was well. they stated that they ALWAYS let their customers know about mismatching, which they didn't with us. they never mentioned it UNTIL AFTER the floors were in and we were unhappy. they stated that they CLEARLY communicated with us that there was no way for them to match the floors, which they didn't do. because if they had done that, we would've had them tear ALL OF THE hardwood out of our house and would've gone with something totally new for the entire first floor!!! we are not stupid people. we didn't not hear them, it was never said to us. NEVER. i don't like the old hardwood in our house, we didn't put it in. it's not something i would chose. BUT, since we were only having 3 rooms done and the rest of the first floor was already hardwood it seemed the easiest, least stressful and expensive route to go. afterall, we had JUST had a baby like 2 weeks earlier, or something insane like that.

anyway!!!!! i am furious. i know this is not going to end up going anywhere. the company, Ana Granite and FLooring, in Sterling VA. has several BBB complaints against them, which we did not find until about a month ago :(. and NONE of them are resolved. in Ana's letter to the BBB they still feel that they did nothing wrong, that they clearly communicated with us, that the mismatch was our fault, and that in our case the customer is NOT right.

meanwhile, the floors still have issues. we get indentations from furniture, and HUGE gouges. we spent a lot of money on basically floors that are going to be ruined in a short amount of time. all we want is for them to do is refund us our money, or replace the hardwood at their cost. and an apology would be nice too!!!!

thanks for reading. if you got this far.