SHIHADEH CARPETS

If I could give Peter Shihadeh a zero I would. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY.

As many of the other reports have mentioned the process did not go very well. WE were interested in the Sandfree process because it was sold very well to us by Peter Shihadeh. It, in fact, did not work on our floors at all. The floors were pealing within one day and we have animals and they completely ripped up the floors in less than a week. We invited Peter over to see the floors and he offered to redo our floors.They came a redid our kitchen, which looked great. They did our upstairs at a later date which looked great. When I confirmed that we woudl be doing the living room in the spring everything seemed fine. When I approached Peter about the last floor, he was extremely rude and very put off that he had to do this last floor. As we were determining the dates for when the work would be done, he basically put down the ultimatum "I?m not happy about doing this anyway ? the SandFree didn?t fail. We scheduled through April. If it isn?t Friday April 16th, it isn?t until May." Not what I expected at all. I basically thank him for his service thus far, said that there was clearly an administrative problem and told him I would be seeking another company. Throughout the entire process, Peter did not provide good customer service. He seemed to busy to take my calls, he did want to own up to the fact that his sandfree process did not work, and then was rude when we were trying to complete the process. I would not use this company at all.

I had seen a truck for this company, and contacted them via their website. All our communication was totally through e-mail, never a personal phone call. At the date and time scheduled, a representative of the company was supposed to come look over my floor and give me an estimate for refinishing. No one ever showed up, but when I tried to contact the person who was supposed to come over, he claimed he had been there but I had not. I asked him why, if he had been there, did he not call my phone number so I could let him into my apartment building. No explanation. I tried to reschedule, but got passed on to another person, and finally received some rude e-mails indicating that my job was just not big enough for them to be interested in.

Started great. Peter is a great salesman, but a lousy flooring contractor. After being ripped-off by a previous flooring contractor who rarely showed up, Peter was very sensitive to our desire to get into our newly-purchased home as soon as possible, and said he'd take care of everything. Well his contractor had no idea what he was doing, even admitted as much, but everyone was polite, so we hung in there with him. End result: floors look okay, but many gaps where the flooring meets wall joints, especially air ducts. Worst thing: he had no idea what he was doing installing our den flooring over a cement slap. Didn't put in a vapor barrier, which is now too late, and worse, didn't leave enough expansion space along perimeter of floor, so the whole thing buckled. He came in and fixed it by nailing down the entire perimeter of the floor, which looks like hell on a tongue-and-groove floor. PETER IS NOT A MAN OF HIS WORD. He insulted my wife when she wanted to show him the problems.

The actual sandfree process lived up to its no smell reputation. However, I would not recommend this process for wood floors with a bevel between the floor boards. Dirt got caught in the grooves and created lines once the finish started aging. Also,they had to redo the finish several times because they left dirt on the floor and coated over it. Of the two installed floors one was ok, but they didn't put 1/8 round in between the end of the floor and the bathroom threshold leaving a gap. The other floor separated between the boards, esp. during the cooler months and some boards are warping. The owner would not honor any guarantee because we ''didn't pay''. We did pay him $4,200 by the end of the job, but were unsure of the final costs. We waited for a final invoice, which never came and they never contacted us requesting final payment. What we received instead were suit papers. We ended up paying what we owed plus court costs.