Borders Contracting

Original estimate was "no problem this will take us about a day I've got a really good tile guy". Three weeks later I still had them in my basement. If you really want to have highschool kids attempt to learn their trade while on the job at your house with an end product that looks like you paid highschool kids in beer to work on your house; then by all means employ these jokers. Contractors used my tools and failed to clean them up (and without asking). I routinely had to leave work to fetch the contractors more supplies because they didn't have a car and kept burning through their estimated supplies. Really an absolutely horrible experience. I could go on but if you're reading this, DO NOT hire them.

The floors were completed the week after some other work was completed by our general contractor in mid-January 2010. Our general contractor subcontracted to Borders Contracting, owned by Frank Garcia. This was the worst experience ever!!! They sanded the floors down to the bare wood, stained and applied oil-based poly. After we moved in we noticed everything scratched the floors. We informed Tom (our general contractor) who just put us directly in touch with Frank, Frank gave us lots of ?reasons? why it happened and offered to ?touch it up?, but after having them come by two times to see that the poly actually peeled up when you stick scotch tape to the floor or if you scratched at it with your finger nail, they decided to correct it. We moved out of the house for a week (including moving all of our furniture to the basement to clear the floors). We moved everything but a couple of pieces of furniture. We moved back in and the floors weren?t very much better (they essentially just applied additional coats of poly even though they later acknowledged that the problem was adhesion between the first coat of poly and the bare wood, so they should have known additional coats would just peel up too). We noted this to Frank because our general contractor had pretty much left us to deal with Frank on our own even though we didn?t have a contract with Frank. Frank gave us a one-year warranty on the floors, so after a few months of seeing how bad the floors had gotten, we emailed Tom and Frank to have the floors sanded again, down to the bare wood, and refinished. After being unresponsive for a week or more, Frank finally responded, agreed to come out and perform the work again, and set a date. He missed the first two dates we set to have him come out and do a stain and adhesion test. He didn?t let us know ahead of time that he wouldn?t make it. He just didn?t show up. Finally, we completed a sample patch, picked the stain color, then they sanded the one room, and put down the stain and poly in that one room (this was for an adhesion test). The adhesion was good, but the color was not what we approved. Frank basically said, ?Well, I don?t know what you think you saw, but this is what you approved?. We were already moved out, Tom was not responsive, so we told Frank to continue. Ultimately, we ended up with durable floors but not in the shade we wanted. Additionally, the team who sanded left divots along the walls where they changed sanding tools for the areas against the wall. So there is a line under the poly that runs along the wall where the floors are unevenly sanded. In the right light you can see areas where the poly did not get applied in all spots (especially along the walls) and other areas where the poly puddled. We moved out of our house for two weeks the second time, moving everything to the basement in order to allow them to do a below average job. The floors get a huge F, we would never recommend working with Frank. To add insult to injury, we had to touch up the paint on the interior walls after being dirtied by the team who came in to refinish the floors again (Frank at least agreed to touch up the baseboards and toe molding). His team was filthy, poorly qualified, and completely mismanaged. We found that at best Frank is not qualified to perform the work for which he markets himself, or at worst, he is qualified, but when a project does not go as planned, he lacks the professionalism and integrity to do what is promised.