DON CHRISTIE'S FLOOR SANDING

I am very pleased with the work performed by Don Christie’s crew. Ted was the lead worker. He is very experienced, knowledgeable, and fastidious in the work he does. They use quality materials. I am delighted and highly recommend this group.

Badly

Terrible experience. Because of a time crunch, another company we had booked for the job couldn't do job and suggested Don Christie. Everything started fine but quickly went downhill from there. We own a 108 year-old house and needed all the floors refinished and some patches made to some of the flooring. Don assured us he could closely match our wood floors. The wood he used was brand new and looked like laminate next to our quarter-saw strips in our floor. He said he got it from the reuse center. He did a minimal job of sanding so there were lines from a piano or something accross the floor that were dark that he didn't get out. He bitched about having to sand under our radiators. He kept telling us that he was losing money because he bid it low and we were asking too much. We never asked him to bid low. We did tell him what we wanted one at the onset. Somehow it was our fault. Sorry, Don, thought you are a floor guy. I'm not, thats why we asked you to get the job done. He is a big whiner and really lazy about details. He does like getting to the cabin. He huffed and puffed about our critical assessments of his work. Besides the lines all across our dining room and living room, there was poly slopped all over out baseboard, pools of hardened poly in the corners, and uneven lines under the radiators where he gave up sanding. ("you'll never see that") There were bubbles, and bunch of 'cat's eyes'. really disappointing, and he kept telling us that because his bid was so low, that's all he could afford to do. He was losing money on the job already. Of course this all came to a head after there were 3 coats of poly down. Oh yeah, he put semi-gloss down on the upstairs when had requested satin throughout. This job took 2 weeks to do because he left for his cabin to get his docks out. We had to pay rent on another place while we waited. Finally it got ugly and we asked him to not come back. He did threaten to put a lien on our house. His employee told us this scenario had happened before with shoddy work and not getting paid, that is. Don is a nice guy but he seems burnt out and not really into it. He made a lot of excuses to cut corners. We actually had Dave's come and redo the whole job. They also said it was poor craftmanship. They ripped out Don's patches and replaced them with some old quarter sawn that matched a ton better and sanded out the lines in the floor and our home looks great. Also it only took them 4 days vs Christies 9. Too bad the difference after the redo was $1200 more than the original price we had. I would love to get some money back from Christie's, but I have a feeling that its not worth the fight. I don't understand people who would rather do a crappy job than do it right. We would have (and eventually did) paid more. It wasn't about the money, it was about the finished work we wanted done. Definately don't use these guys if you want someone who cares. They don't.

Don and his crew did a fantastic job. We closed on the house on a Tuesday, and they started the job the very next day. When the first coat of varnish took longer to dry than anticipated due to wet weather, Don volunteered to finish the work himself over the weekend so that everything would be done on schedule. The work was top notch, the floors look brand new, and all was done on time. Great work.