So before we moved in we decided to have the floors in our living room, dining room and hallway refinished. I called two floor refinishing companies. Both took time to come out to see the floors; however, one never followed up to provide an estimate and the other refused to provide references because he thought they were useless (I wonder what he was trying to hide.)
After searching extensively online, I found a company that offered the exact service we were looking for so I called to get more information. The woman I spoke with was very friendly and even provided references when I asked for them. My husband called the references and received glowing reviews. Based on that and receiving an estimate that matched our budget and a delivery time frame that fit our tight schedule, we set up an appointment for Monday, September 24.
The week prior to our appointment, my husband, my father and I worked nearly around the clock to get as much painting done as possible—tackling the living room, dining room, kitchen and hallway. (See A Dash of Color for the painting story.)
On Sunday evening, we crammed everything that had been in the living and dining room into the kitchen and sealed off the doorways to block out the dust that would be created during the job. Sunday evening while reviewing the flooring company paperwork again I noticed that their sanding machines required a 220v electrical outlet. While we had had the electrical system in our apartment upgraded, the job did not include the installation of a 220v outlet–we didn’t have the need for one.
Concerned this detail would prevent the workers from completing the job, I called the flooring company Monday morning. The representative assured me they could get around this issue by tapping into our apartment’s circuit breaker box for power.
Relieved that the job could go on, my husband met the workers from the flooring company Monday morning. They created sample patches on the floor of the three stains we would be choosing from. Strangely, on the floor, the colors all looked the same. We picked Minwax Early American—a darker tone than the existing stain that would complement our rich wall colors.
My husband watched the workers set up the floor sander and get started. Confident everything was ok, he left the apartment. You may be thinking, “Why would you leave workers alone in your home?” Well, there are only six rooms in our tiny apartment. Three of them were stuffed with furniture, two were being worked on, and all six were off of the hallway, which would also be refinished, so there was nowhere for dear hubby to go to escape the massive sawdust clouds.
About two hours after he left, my husband received a call from a neighbor informing him that there was a serious problem. Apparently the workers determined they were not getting enough power from the circuit breaker box in our apartment, so without our knowledge or approval they found the building’s super and asked for access to the building’s circuit breaker box for more power—and our always accommodating super obliged. But by tapping into the circuit breaker box, the flooring workers blew a fuse that knocked out power in an entire line of apartments in our building. (The better solution would have been for the workers to return to their office to get a sander that was compatible with a 120v outlet, which the company had but never mentioned, but apparently that never occurred to them.)
Fortunately, power was not lost in our apartment and the flooring workers were able to complete the sanding and come in the next day to apply the polyurethane to finish the job. Boy, did our floors look great!!!
But that’s not the end of the story.
An electrician had to be called to replace the blown fuse. In addition, our next door neighbor who works from home lost the work she had been doing on her computer when the power went out.
Days later we received an email from the co-op board informing us that the cost of the fuse replacement would be taken out of the $1,000 security deposit we provided when we started our renovation work. In addition, our security deposit would also be used to cover the cost of replacing our neighbor’s fried computer modem and $500 worth of work she estimated was lost because of the power outage.
We, of course, thought this was unfair, because it was our contractor, not us, who caused the damage. After several months of going back and forth with the co-op board, the flooring company and our attorney, I was able to get the flooring company to pay for the cost of the fuse replacement and the board not to garnish our security deposit to pay for our neighbor’s lost work.
As the incident happened just a week before we moved in, our first couple of months living in the building were a little awkward. Luckily, any bad feelings have dissipated and we are now all living in co-op harmony…and we still think our floors look fabulous.
See for yourself:
Before
