Silmar Flooring

I gave Silmar a B overall because my experience with them swung between positive and negative. On the one hand, they installed a quality floor on a relatively short timetable. On the other hand, we had agreed prior to the engagement that the installation team would carefully undercut the baseboards to accept the new wood flooring. However, when the installation team got here, they said there was no time to do that and the job proceeded without including that crucial step. The other problem with the team's arrival was that the foreman was nowhere to be found. He was at another job because the team had been double-booked. So when it was time to discuss the discrepancy regarding the baseboards, there was no one to speak to. When the foreman finally arrived the next day, I heard way too much information about how difficult his business situation is vis a vis tight profit margins. On the quality front, the floor slabs themselves ended up being installed very well (they have held up nicely two years later), except for small gaps at spots where the floors meet the baseboards. Then there were issues with the molding. They basically ran out of the molding that went with my particular floor, then tried to make up the difference with what I believed to be some cheapo Home Depot or Lowe's molding that was an obvious mismatch for the floor. I asked him to find molding that matched the floors, and he did come back then next week with molding that matched better. It would've been more professional to say up-front that it was going to take a week to get the matching molding, versus trying to convince me to accept a cheap substitute. Overall, I intentionally paid a premium for Silmar versus other bidders because I needed to not think about the job, as I had many other projects going, and I thought Silmar was the service provider to do it. Ultimately, I spent far more time dealing with them than I and, I believe, they ever wanted to.

Silmar was ontime, fast, and did excellent work installing a new Armstrong linoleum floor in our hall bath. We had some fairly demanding coving and sealing requirements which they met with flying colors. They were lower cost than the competing bids and again their quality and performance were excellent.

Experience went better than expected and I was very impressed. I would recommend them to friends and family. I had 3 local flooring companies come out to bid for flooring and Silmar was the lowest by $1000 to $1500. The other flooring companies warned me that their bid was low because they cut corners. I did some research and called the flooring manufacturer and found that Silmar was recogized by the flooring manufacturer (Mannington) as a product installer. I confronted Silmar and one of the company's owner, Silvia, showed me and inventory of the products they install. Everything was per the manufacturing instructions, including the manufacturer's glue. The underlayment used was specific for areas like kitchen and bathrooms (water resistant). So, I tried to get the others to price match, but none would. I went with Silmar, comfortable I was saving money and they weren't going to cut corners. The installers that came were very professional and nice, they completed the work in the time they estimated. They spoke english well and answered any question I threw at them. They took the time to make sure they weren't making a mess by making cuts outside the house. The owner's brother was on site and personally worked on the installation and quality control. He found manufacturing flaws in the flooring and had new material delivered. On one of the days I had to leave them on site by themselves and I was not too worried about leaving. I returned nothing was missing and my house was all locked up. The job ended when they finished vacuuming. They left my home they way it was before they arrived, except I had new flooring.

Installation was done as scheduled to fit into remodel project. Quality of install was good with one exception - installers got small spots of adhesive on the surface of the flooring in a couple of places. Calls to salesman at Silmar went unanswered a couple of times and when I did get through, I was told to try mineral spirits of a "goo-gone" type product and if that didn't work he would send out someone to fix it. Those products did not work and a couple more calls/voicemail went unanswered so I went to the store in person and was assured that his installer would call and set up a time to come and fix the problem. Two weeks have gone by and no call from anyone from Silmar.