Finishing Touches Hardwood Flooring Inc

The process went well until I began cleaning my floors. (Except my husband had to touch up all of the baseboards because Bill did not take caution to avoid getting stain on them). We were never instructed that we needed to use a specific hardwood floor cleaner. So I used rejuvenate which is what I used at my old house and had good results. Well my floors are ruined after 3 months of having them redone. We had conversations with Joe the owner and Bill the guy who did the work. Bill offered to fix the problem for a hefty price but he stopped returning our calls to set up a date. The owner Joe’s response was that it was my responsibility to ask how to properly clean my floors not their responsibility to tell us how to clean them. Joe was extremely rude and unprofessional yelling at me saying he shouldn’t have to tell us how take care of flooring. I have never been treated like this by any contractor EVER. He has no customer service skills whatsoever. Lesson learned…never go with the least expensive quote. You get what you pay for. If you look at the attached photo- that is a picture of freshly cleaned floors. Notice the haziness and inconsistencies on the floor. It turns my stomach when I look at them and think about the money we spent.

Utilized Finishing Touches based on recommendation of kitchen remodeler who was also very disappointed in the service we received and eventually finished all the trim work themselves. Joe was very argumentative and blamed us the homeowner for not notifying him we would be staying in the lower level while the work was being completed. Crew did not clean up after tearing up the floor leaving it to us. Trash cans full of trash was removed by the homeowner and of course Joe had his excuses for that too. You would have thought Joe would have shown up at least once to review the issues or check on progress but never stepped in home after initial estimate was given.

Finishing Touches was very easy to work with. The installers were professional, courteous, tidy, and very prompt. They provided a schedule as to when the specific steps would be done and they completed everything on time. My floors look AMAZING!

I was beyond impressed with Finishing Touches! We received a competitive quote from Joe, service was fantastic and we are thrilled with the results. The guys were so conscientious while working in our home (we have 3 young children) and we are about to sell our house, so they were very flexible to park on the street and position our blinds for exterior photos etc. Other contractors even commented on the phenomenal job they did. We can’t recommend enough! We will absolutely use them again.

Outstanding. Very professional and would use them again

They did a fantastic job. They were professional, showed up when they said they would and did a high quality job. I will definitely use this company in the future.

This is one of the best experiences that I have had with an outside contractor's work. They always showed up on time, had an amazing work ethic, were friendly, and were extremely skilled. I thought the cost was very competitive too. The floors turned out perfect. I highly recommend them!

The installation teams on both projects were professional and efficient. They did a great job and on time with what was promised. Joe Sauter helped us make the best decisions and his advice was spot on. Highly recommend him and his team!

Very shoddy workmanship! Do NOT use this company!! This is a response to Joe's feedback on my previous review. His offer to "fix" was: A) Not immediate and B) Came with a warning that it would likely make the problem worse! His crew working on weekends and Memorial Day was HIS plan (and it was primarily only one guy, Bill, who was committed to getting the job done)!! I didn't ask for $500. I withheld $500 from final payment pending issues being addressed. In hindsight, I would have withheld much more. After we have some more wear on the floors, we plan to have the entire first floor redone - by another company! WAY more than $250 worth! Joe is the one who immediately jumping to making it a legal issue and having an attorney contact us. Part of the agreement was that the terms would not be made public, so I will neither confirm nor deny what he states as the settlement.

HORRIBLY!! Don’t even let these people into your home if you care about how your floors look! Finishing Touches came recommended by a friend, so I made a huge mistake in dismissing older reviews as being past history and thinking the company had improved. Not true. Check out the Angie’s List reviews from 7/15/2011 (C), 11/19/2012 (D), 8/20/2012 (D), 5/31/2014 (C), 1/31/2015 (F), and mine. Couple that with the fact that the owner, Joe Sauter, is proud to tell you he’s been doing this for 30 years and he makes it clear he will continue doing it the way he’s always done it. In essence, he tells you that his company has not improved. If anything, it’s gotten worse! We had a number of problems with Finishing Touches and the owner, Joe Sauter, but the two largest ones were a very conspicuous area where his people oversanded the floor AND Joe’s crude, rude, unprofessional response to our complaint about the work. (Other problems included areas undersanded, sloppy staining, and marking of walls.) Because of the problems, I withheld $500 from the final payment (on a $13,217.35 job). After being told by his foreman that attempting to correct the oversanding would likely make it worse, I told his foreman to not attempt it. I then sent an e-mail to Joe telling him that I was going to be out of town a few days, but when I got back I wanted to discuss the situation with him in an attempt to resolve the situation “to our mutual satisfaction”. Here is Joe’s response (I took the liberty of inserting some characters in place of some letters in a couple words, but otherwise unedited – typos/misspellings/poor grammar are all his): “Your floors look great I will walk ever customer I have through there and explain we worked in sat Sunday and Monday Memorial Day your wife thank bill and gave him a bonus this is all about what you can get for a discount and is f#%?ing bulls#&t you pay you what you want and if your so called referrals are like you tell them to call someone else I don't need it I've done this in Anderson township for 30 years and I know what this is about”. A few minutes later, he followed that up with “A f#%?ing discount what can I get for free same guy that ******* at ever restaurant he goes to”. To which I simply replied “We’re done.” That elicited the following response from Joe: “Yap I'll be putting a Leon on your house Monday I met with my attorney this morning and I'll be sure to let all your neighbors know what a dead beat you are I'll get paid one way or another”. Before I returned home, he had already contacted an attorney. I had my attorney negotiate an out-of-court settlement with his attorney. Unless this is how you like to be treated as a customer, I sure wouldn’t have Finishing Touches or Joe Sauter do any work for you!

They were able to sand out the beveled edges and refinish the pre-finished hardwood. The floors look great and we no longer have the grooves between each plank, making for a much cleaner appearance.

The finished product looks terrible. Some pieces were not cut to fit under the trim. Some trim pieces were cut but not secured to wall. Installer did a terrible job cleaning up and actually had to come back and clean up more because we weren't satisfied with the original clean up.

I purchased wide plank T&G flooring from Cali Bamboo, underlayment and glue through Amazon. I removed the carpet and prepped the floor before Finishing Touches arrived. I opted to reinstall the old baseboard, which resulted in significant savings Positives: Getting the bid was quick, painless and fairly priced compared with other bids for the same job. - I ended up choosing Finishing Touches based on a friends' recommendation. The bid included varying options, such as owner removal of carpet and owner installing baseboard instead of just adding shoe molding for an additional cost. Negatives: They showed up both days about 30 minutes later than expected. The installation overall, looks very good. Maybe 4 or 5 very minor chips over 800 sq ft of flooring. There is one spot on the floor that has a very small air gap under a plank. You can hear air being pushed out when you step on it. One corner in the den doesn't quite come close enough to the wall so you can see a sliver of a gap between the baseboard and flooring. There were a couple pieces that were pulled while being installed plus a couple flawed pieces from Cali Bamboo. The bottom line: we ran out of flooring and I had to order another box. This delayed the final installation a few weeks. I ordered the number of square feet in the bid rounded up to the next box. But we still came up short. Stuff happens, but I thought I should add it to the report. I should qualify these negatives. You really have to be looking hard to see them. Summary: The workers went above and beyond on a lot of little things. They created a very nice threshold to the sliding glass door. The advice to keep the flooring running in the same direction between two rooms that form an L shape was spot on. They also helped with a few baseboard cuts that would have taken me a couple hours but they did in about 15 minutes. The workers were surprised that I purchased the flooring - unpacked and stacked it to acclimate, per Cali Bamboo instructions even though that was the plan from the beginning. The workers also were inclined to nail the flooring down instead of a floating floor install. Floating floor install was the original plan and how it was done (top floor condo unit), but I'm glad I was there to make sure that the flooring wasn't nailed down as I'm not sure this was communicated to the crew.

They did a great job. The floors for the most part were done very well. the only thing that I would be more careful of in the future is the care to detail that some of the workers took. They did a poor job in the repair to an area. At this same place they did not finish to the edges of the floors in a few areas.

It went very well. They were very accommodating when I ask 3/4 through to do some additional sanding.

Very professional, punctual, and quality of end product was excellent. We love our hardwood floors.

The guy said he had the material we needed to match our existing and he would do it cheaper than what Lumber Liquidators would charge. The type of flooring he was going to put in (white) was not a match to what we had (red). Thought we couldn't trust him since he would treat Lumber Liquidators that way.

They did an amazing job! I get so many complements on my floors. I live in a very old home and the previous owners had the hardwood on my main floor covered up with carpet. They are the orginal floors of the home ( wide planked and pegged) and they had pets. So needless to say they needed some work! But Finishing Touches were able to restore them beautifully! We love our floors!

red wrong and they would have to order more flooring and finish it up another day. To make a long story short, it was a horrible experience and the man was very rude to me. I also noticed that one piece of wood was installed incorrectly just the other day and now that piece has cracked in half and will need to be replaced.

We had hoped to refinish the floors in our 85-year-old home. Joe had to deliver the sad news that they did not have another re-finish in them. Fortunately, he also provided us with an estimate for replacement, using either hardwood or bamboo. We chose hardwood, cleared the two rooms needing the work, and went out of town with our four pugs. We returned to new floors that far exceeded our wildest dreams! It's like a new house! We plan to have Joe and his crew back to install new flooring in the upstairs landing. Two things bear mention: First, Joe told us to prepare for dust, but amazingly, there was a lot LESS DUST than we anticipated. Second, Joe is the strong silent type and not inclined to talk more than necessary--so if you are anguishing over the process, talk it over with a friend--Joe's busy making your floors look good.

!I can't remember details from that long ago except that I made LOTS of notes to myself that these people were fantastic in all respects and I would LOVE to refer them--and, of course, hire them again when I get ready to install more hardwood. :-)

Fantastic work! We talked with a few other companies, most of whom we were comfortable with) but Finishing Touches had great service and a very competitive price. They put up with our dogs barking at them, worked quickly, and the detailing that they did around our floor vents looks really sharp. The installation of the floor boards was something that hadn't been perfectly communicated with the working crew but it was professionally sorted out quite quickly. Excellent job in helping us route our cables for our surround sound. When some of the transition strips (which were stained to match the new hardwood) between rooms didn't quite match they were great about sending someone out to redo the work. That really sold me on the company. My wife and I highly recommend this company.

I thought they were fine. I wasn't really there for the work. The price seemed right. They did a good job with the work.

I received bids from three companies: JP Flooring Hammonds, Finishing Touches. Two gave me the exact same estimate: $1088. Finishing Touches' bid was $500 plus $105 for the shoe molding. I called Finishing Touches to make sure they did not make a mistake on their bid and would not ask for more money later. They confirmed that the price was correct. There were three differences in the bids that I want to call attention to. The first was that one company offered a system that would extract the dust for an additional $800. I paid the person who normally cleans my house an extra hour to clean and dust the kitchen. I would recommend this over the expensive vacuum system. Another difference was in the kind of polyurethane used. Two companies used the old oil-based poly that smells more. JP Flooring used a water-based poly. JP Flooring said it would smell less and dry harder. It would also allow them to do the job quicker because it dries faster. On the other hand Finishing Touches told me of a company they used the water-based poly for (and named the establishment so I could verify his story) and after 6 months it was all marked up so they had to re-do the job. He told me that eventually the oil-based poly will be phased out. Either Finishing Touches didn't know how to use the water-based material correctly or the oil was a better product. In any case I decided to go with Finishing Touches based on their reviews - and I was not disappointed. The last difference was the number of days. JP Flooring with its water-based poly bid the job for three days while Hammonds bid for four days (it takes 24 hours for each of the steps to dry). Minwax makes a product in which they mix the stain with the polyurethane. Finishing Touches mixes its own, cutting down on one day of work. In preparation, I removed everything from the kitchen including anything from the walls (I was afraid if something got bumped while coating it would be a mess). I have some shelves above a desk and covered them with old towels, held in place by push pins. I put up an old lined-drape over the door from the kitchen to the living room held with push pins to the outside of the door trim. This dramatically reduced dust in the rest of the house and reduced some of the smell. They sanded and stained/coated. The kitchen is connected to the laundry room which has a window. I left the furnace fan on high and opened the window to the laundry room to remove fumes and speed up the drying process. The job was planned for and completed in three days. On day one they called about 9:00 AM and said they would not be there until noon because they had to move furniture back into a living room from their last job. They arrived at noon. They helped me put up the drape over the doorway to the living room and then they sanded and stained/coated the first time. The second day they came on schedule. They installed the shoe molding and coated a second time. The third day they called at 9:30 saying they would not be there until 2:00. The installer had to make measurements for estimates. He arrived about 2:30 and finished the job. The result has been excellent. In my experience with employing people to work at my house those time delays were minor. Despite the few last minute time changes the job was finished in three days as planned. The installers were friendly, respectful, and excellent at their craft. I was pleased with their work. I was so impressed that I asked them for a bid on replacing my 17-year old carpeting in my dining room, living room, and hall with hardwood. Price will tell the story for my next adventure.

Joe was very nice when he sold us on the work. We got a good feeling from him, we trusted him, and we gave him a set of keys to our new house. We returned to our old house a few hours away to pack up and move. When we returned to the house to move in, the floors were done. They looked great at first look, and we were careful to only walk on them with our socks we loved them so much. But then, we noticed a few issues. The carpet at the top of the stairs was not reattached after they stained the wood at the top. None of the closest were refinished. There was stain on the bottom of the white door jams--it looks like they tried to wipe it off, but it still shows badly. The trim work was OK otherwise. The house smelt for weeks afterwards, and we could not stay in the house the first night because of it--this is to be expected. Then came the problems! Joe had told us he accepted Visa, and when it came time to pay, I pulled out my credit card. We were then told that he only accepted cash or check. We told him we did not have the cash on hand, and we did not have a checkbook--all our banking is done online. I just needed his address and phone number and who the check should be made out to. His reply: " Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 09:21... I do not understand these complications I emailed my address 2weeks ago then I called this past Sunday got no answer called again Monday and gave [your wife] the same total again I was told that a check would be mailed at thestart (sic) of this weekKNOW (sic) ITS FRIDAY AND YOU NEED THIS INFO AGAIN THE ADDRESS IS P.O BOX 0019 CINCINNATI OH.45254 MYCELL (sic) IS513-460-7364.Iam (sic) a small company and cant (sic) wait on cash flow I have paid my guys in full including 300.00 in bonus money to work late and on sat and sun to complet (sic) your job please call and let me know where I can pick up a check. " I felt bad, and explained the delays at the closing table and getting the funds, and apologized. I gave him the details from the bank, and that the check would arrive 12/9/2009 in the mail. On 12/8/2009 he emails me: " Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 18:37 ... its Tuesday I have not received a check.Do (sic) have e.t.a ?460-7364. " I reminded him the pay date was 12/09/2009, to which he replied the next day: "Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 15:45 ... No check today wensday (sic). " I called the bank, and they guessed the issue was the weather--those of you in Cincinnati will remember how the city shut down for the snow that day--and the post office just did not deliver it. I gave him the details from the bank and their number so that he could call them to verify himself. His reply: "Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 18:39... Thursday no check. " I asked him what the bank said, and he replied: "Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 20:46 ... What bank would I call and why do I need to call your bank? " I told him I provided that information already. The reason he needed to call was in case there was an error in the address, he could correct it. "Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2009 14:28...Sunday football no check and no call ??? " At this point, I called the bank again, and they were clueless. The whole time this was going on, he was leaving voice mails on my wife's cell phone that were less than professional. She was very upset about them, the way she was being treated, and how our trust in who we thought was a decent person was shattered. Shortly thereafter, I received the check in the mail, returned from the post office as undeliverable. It turned out the bank had mailed it to some address they had made up that looked nothing like what we gave them. Again, I apologized, and offered to forward the check to him. He told me he would come by my office and pick it up, which he did in a huff. Once he had his check, he did call one more time and said he would be willing to work with us again when we were ready to put hardwood down in the kitchen--another project we had talked with him about--as if nothing had happened. There is no way we would ever do business with Joe and Finishing Touches again! Sometime thereafter, we met with other hardwood flooring guys about our kitchen project, and they told us how Joe's business had tanked, and he had gone from a great showroom, down to working out of the back of his van. It was a very sad story, and we felt very bad for him. While the issue of payment was the bank's fault for mailing his check to the wrong address, the way we got to that place--him not actually accepting Visa when he told us he did--and the way he treated us when he wanted his money, was downright unprofessional. You find out the true character of a man in times of adversity, and clearly he was not the kind of man we wanted to do business with again. If you choose to do business with him, just be aware upfront, and hopefully you can manage the situation better than we did, but good luck.