TL:DR = I hate my floors and think the man who did them is incompetent. FI and I are fighting over the floors.
FI and I bought a house and have been in it for just over a week. We are taking care of minor problems, but one thing he wanted to get fixed was the dark water stains on the hardwood floors.
So, FI hired a man to resurface (no sanding) our floors and to replace the water damaged boards. We found him on Angie's List and he had many positive reviews. I am just livid with the way they turned out.
First of all, maybe I'm ignorant about the way things are done when repairing floors. I was under the impression that the damaged board would be removed and then completely replaced with a new board. Apparently, that's not how it was done. They cut into the existing boards, removing only a piece of that board, and then replaced just that part, I suppose to save money on materials. I really liked that the entry had long planks in front of the door. Now there's a very obvious (and hideous) patch there. Plus, he cut the boards in a pattern. I know there's a pattern to laying floors, but it shouldn't look like a grid. It just makes the patch super obvious. I didn't want it to look like I had patched floors! I think I would rather have water stained floors than this! Also, when they used their tool to cut out the boards, they nicked another adjacent board that wasn't being replaced, putting a notch in it that lines up with the end of the board next to it. So, now it really stands out and one of my boards has a short deep groove in the middle of it. We pointed it out to the man before he finished the work, and when we saw it last night, it was still there. He did not fix it.
There is also an area that doesn't have any sheen to it like the rest of the floor, which makes me think he missed it with the satin poly coat. When he left our house, he left all the lights on and only locked the deadbolt and not the knob. We don't have any window coverings, so when we stopped by at 10 PM last night to check out the floors we could see in perfectly. So could anyone else. It's like having an advertisement that says "HEY! This house is vacant! Come on in!". Because the coating was still drying, we couldn't turn off the lights. We managed to turn off most by leaning around walls and stretching, but the bedroom lights had to stay on. They're still on until we can go back tonight. Yay for wasting electricity (which he doesn't have to pay for). I have ZERO trust in this man now. He charged us nearly as much for these small repairs as resurfacing the entire house. I know that hardwoods do not cost THAT much per square foot.
FI sees what I mean, but doesn't think the floors are that bad. He also admits that he knew they were going to cut the boards but didn't think it would be a big deal to me. He is very mad at me and is actually questioning our relationship. He doesn't know if he can deal with my constant negativity. I think the real issue is that he had to convince me to do this. I wasn't sure about it and he told me to trust him and that it would be okay. Now that I don't like the results, I am sure he takes it personally. As far as the criticism, I feel like I have to look critically at this because we paid a lot of money for the service and it needed to be done right. He doesn't know if he can spend the rest of his life with someone that constantly brings him down and makes him feel upset, even though he wants to. This house is just stressing us out as we try to get it repaired. It was the first night we've gone to bed still not speaking. It's quite upsetting, but I don't know how to fix it either. I'd much rather live with horrible floors than without him, but I'm upset that this has turned out so horribly.
I am sharing pictures of the floors before and after. The stain is not an issue. This is before they were stained and finished. They match much more closely now (though he says it will take them 2 months to fully deepen into the matching color). The contrast helps to see it better, I think. I can get other pictures of the finished floors, but the layout is still the same as it was before they were stained and coated.
Front entry. Note the long boards all the way across the entry hallway.
Front entry now. Note the pattern of short/long boards that are exactly the same length.
Notch in board where they cut it out of the floor. This has not been repaired.
Cracked board (old) where it meets the new. I don't think it was cracked before. Not repaired.
Hallway before.
Hallway now. This pattern is even more obvious than the one by the front door.
I don't have a good image of the master before because of their furniture, but here's the after. It's the least bad of the bunch.
Am I overreacting? I really hate my floors now. I wish I had never done this repair. What I hate even more is the wedge it's placed between myself and FI. I haven't given the man the second half of his fee yet. FI has washed his hands of it and is leaving it to me. We aren't really speaking currently and it breaks my heart.
I'm just emotionally exhausted.
"They say there's no such place... as Paradise. Even if you search to the ends of the Earth, there's nothing there. No matter how far you walk, it's always the same road. It just goes on and on. But, in spite of that... Why am I so driven to find it? A voice calls to me... It says, 'Search for Paradise.' " - Kiba, Wolf's Rain