archie's concrete design

While Shelia and Pat from Archie’s are nice and seem to try their best they tend to over promise and under deliver. I was told this job would take 3 to 4 days to complete. It took 9 days. Shelia had to put an overlay down in the front entry way. She used a new product. She found out afterwards that she applied the stain incorrectly. It showed. After sealing the floor she did come back to airbrush so that helped but I wonder if the stain would have looked better had she stained the floor properly. When she was sealing the floor she left 9 or 10 small puddles around the edges of the rooms throughout. She tried to remove them with acetone but that did not work. So now when you walk through one of the rooms if the light hits one of the puddles you can see them and wonder if you need to wipe something up on the floor. If you have a small room or new construction Archies Concrete might be for you. But if I ever need help staining or sealing concrete floors again I will look elsewhere.

I think the company underestimated the time/difficulty of removing the engineered wood floors, and I think that affected their attitude toward the balance of the job. On the positive side, I think the overlay was artfully done and the scoring was precise. After the work was completed, the owner came out and waxed the floor for me (I insisted on paying) because there appeared to be a film on the second coat of sealer. In terms of criticism, we think it would have been helpful for company and customer to look at "closeup" picture of the stains so that there would be a meeting of the minds about the approximate appearance of the finished product. There are other things that we think would have been helpful to know (perhaps even in writing)...e.g., it would have been helpful to have been advised that construction dust would be *everywhere*, as we would have prepped the home (dishes, artwork, etc., in all the rooms) for that, had we been informed. We would have made arrangements to sleep elsewhere, too, had we known that the "really smelly" sealer was extremely strong and unpleasant smelling and it was not feasible to sleep in the house that first night. We were also disappointed that the quarter-round shoe molding was not removed before the job began (we have had to pry it off and toss it after the floor was stained and sealed ... more expense now to replace). Our hardwood cabinets were speckled with glue that splattered up in the wood floor removal stage -- they were not cleaned at the end of the job, and we haven't been able to restore them to their original look. Ms. Archie is obviously hardworking & talented. If one makes sure there's a meeting of the minds at the outset -- and that the company takes adequate precautions to protect your walls, etc., her company can provide a quality product at a reasonable price.