Reviews
Hardwood Flooring Reviews Wilmington NC | Find The Bad Ones Too
A 95% customer satisfaction rate is our number, so here is where to go and check it for yourself. We would rather you read the three-star reviews than the five-star ones, because those tell you what happens when a job does not go to plan, which is the thing you are actually buying insurance against when you hire Wilmington NC Hardwood Flooring or anyone else to work in your house.
Across 15 years and more than 4,500 completed flooring projects, the same handful of things come up when people tell us why they called back: the dust was not as bad as they expected, the price did not move, we talked them out of something, and the same crew turned up that had quoted the job. None of it is exotic, and all of it is checkable by asking a reference the right questions.
Hardwood Flooring Reviews Wilmington NC
The most useful review is one you can find yourself, on a platform where the bad ones are visible too. Our Google Business Profile is the place to look, and the link will sit here once the listing is live. In the meantime, ask on the estimate visit for two references in your area and call them.
How To Read A Flooring Contractor's Reviews
- Read the three-star reviews first. Five-star reviews tell you a job went fine. Three-star reviews tell you what happens when it does not, which is what you are really buying insurance against.
- Watch for dates clustered in one week. Twenty reviews in a fortnight then silence is a campaign, not a track record.
- Check how the owner replies to criticism. More informative than any number of compliments.
- Look for specifics. Great service, highly recommend could be about a dentist. They found the crawl space vapour barrier was torn and sorted it first could only be about a floor.
What Our Customers Most Often Mention
Across more than 4,500 completed flooring projects, the same handful of things come up when people tell us why they called back or passed our number on. None of them is exotic.
- The dust was not as bad as expected. Containment on every machine including the edger, and sealed HVAC returns, is the difference between a dusty week and dust on the kitchen cabinets for a month
- The price did not move. Because the unknowns were written down as unknowns at quote stage with a rate against them, rather than discovered later
- We talked them out of something. A recoat instead of a full sand, or crawl space work before refinishing, where that was genuinely the better call
- The same people turned up. No subcontracting, so the crew that surveyed the house did the work
- They got the readings. Written on the quote, and useful whoever ends up doing the job
Questions Worth Asking A Reference
- Did the price change, and why? Tells you whether the quote was honest about unknowns.
- Did they find anything unexpected, and how did they tell you? On a floor here, something unexpected is normal. How it was handled is the test.
- How much dust ended up elsewhere in the house? Specific, memorable, impossible to answer vaguely.
- How does the floor look now? Ask someone whose job was eighteen months ago. A floor that looked perfect in March can cup in August.
Four Jobs Our Customers Describe Back To Us
When somebody passes our number on, they usually tell the story of their own job rather than ours. These are the four we hear repeated most, written the way the homeowner tends to tell them.
The floor that did not need replacing
A 1940s house off Market Street, heart pine under three layers of vinyl and felt. Two companies had quoted to tear it out. We lifted a vent, measured 9mm of pine above the cut nails and told them it had another full sand in it, probably two. They have a floor nobody can buy any more, for less than the cost of replacing it with oak.
The August cupping that came back every year
Ogden, white oak over a vented crawl space. Sanded flat twice by other contractors and cupped again both times. Our meter read 19% in the joists and the vapour barrier was torn across half the footprint. We had the crawl space sorted first, waited for the subfloor to come down to 11%, then sanded once. It has stayed flat.
The quote that did not move
Brunswick Forest, engineered oak glued to a slab. The slab tested wet, so the quote carried a named line for a moisture-mitigation membrane with a rate against it rather than a shrug. It was needed, it was charged at the rate written down, and the final invoice matched the estimate to the dollar.
The rental turned round between bookings
Carolina Beach, sand-worn finish in a three-bed rental. A full sand would have cost two months of season. We abraded and recoated with Bona Traffic HD in a four-day January window, kept the wear layer intact, and set a two-year recoat cycle so it never needs a full sand at all.
Where We Have Fallen Short
We would rather tell you this than have you find it in a review. Four things go wrong on our jobs more often than anything else, and none of them is a secret in the trade.
- Schedules slip in the wet season. Between June and September we will not coat a floor when the house is sitting above 60% relative humidity, because the finish will not cure properly. That has pushed jobs back by two and three days, and we have had unhappy phone calls about it. We still will not coat it.
- Stain colour reads differently once it is down. A sample on a board in our hand is not the same as 400 square feet in your own north light. We now sample on your floor, in your light, and wait for you to look at it in the evening as well as the morning, which costs a day and has saved several floors.
- We have missed hollow spots under glued engineered. On a large slab a hollow sounds different when the house is empty. We now walk and sound every glued floor twice, once at install and once at the final walk-through, after getting this wrong.
- We do not always have the matching board. On a repair in a discontinued product, the honest answer is sometimes that the only clean fix is to lift a closet and use that wood, and to tell you that before we start rather than halfway through.
What We Would Ask If We Were Hiring Us
A review tells you what happened on somebody else's floor. These questions tell you what will happen on yours, and any contractor in Wilmington should be able to answer all four on the phone.
- What moisture content will you accept before you lay or coat? We want the wood and the subfloor within 2% to 4% of each other, with the house conditioned and the crawl space dealt with. A contractor who has no number here is not measuring.
- What containment do you run, and does the edger have it too? The big drum machine is the easy part. Most of the dust in a house comes off an uncontained edger working the perimeter.
- Who is actually on site? Ours is the crew that surveyed the house. If the answer is a subcontractor you have not met, the person you negotiated with is not the person making the decisions.
- What happens if it cups next August? Ours is that we come back and meter it, free, and tell you honestly whether it is the floor, the house or the crawl space, with the original readings to compare against.
Ask for references instead
Two homeowners in your area with a similar floor, on request. More useful than any number of stars.