OCKEN DALE FLOORS

This entire process turned into a 3 week, 3 day project, June 9th-July 2nd. The first sand job was exceptionally poor. There were deep sander grooves 6 to 8 inches in diameter, deep dings, and scrapes were seen throughout our entire floor. After a call to the company, they decided to send their Finisher, Artie out that Friday, June 13th for repairwork. Once he surveyed the damage, he decided that the entire floor needed to be resanded, stained, and recoated. He confirmed there were too many areas to spot repair and thought repeating the entire process was in our best interest. We called Dale Ocken and asked what would be done differently the second time around. He admitted one of the first sanders wasn t very experienced, normally doing install work verses sanding. He assigned a new crew for week number 2. Week 2, June 17-20th, 2008, we had a new team of people come to redo the floor. Steve was in charge of this crew. We commend Steve for giving his best to try to fix the errors from the previous week. Even with Steve's incredible turnaround, there are some areas that will never be the way they were prior to this project. After week 2, our appliances were returned to the kitchen. This is when we noticed two large dings in our new stainless steel dishwasher. At this point, we requested an appointment with Dale Ocken on June 27th to discuss this project in detail, as even after the second re-do -- there were still a few uneven areas. Examples are one step was uneven, deep grooves in the sides of our wood stairs that were not there prior, and the appliance damage. Our meeting with Dale Ocken was not what we expected. Upon arrival, he told us he thought the areas looked 98% complete and didn t want to listen to our concerns whatsoever. He was very unprofessional, critical of our complaints, and extremely rude. His manner was defiant, hostile, and demeaning. He denied that the damage to the dishwasher and the sand marks on the sides of the stairs were caused by his workers. He did reiterate that the first improper sanding was done by DJ, who is actually an installer and not a sander. After our heated discussion, he did agree to pay for the damage to the dishwasher (after we told him we weren t sure if we were confident his company could fix our floor), and admitted there was nothing he could do about the stair damage, continuing to deny it happened during this job. He said although some areas weren t 100%, there wasn t much else they could do. He told us Steve could come back to work on buffing some of the bumpy areas, then recoat the floor a final time. On June 30th, Steve buffed problem areas, resanded a stair, and stained. July 1st-2nd the final coats of polyurethane were applied. In the end our floors turned out nice, however the process in which we got there was very stressful and exhausting, making it certain we'll never use this company again.

They cleaned up all of the excess wood and hauled it off. They made sure the floor was smooth and they finished their job in a timely manner. They were on time every day and they guys didn t tear up anything else in our home. They were all very polite.

Ocken's did an excellent job. It took a crew about four days to complete the work and it was installed properly. It is completely level and there are no blemishes or problem areas. We had a few minor issues and they fixed them promptly.