Rose Hardwood Floors

Don is a nice guy, however, he is unskilled to perform a simple flooring project. The end result of what was supposed to be a 3-day project, was simply terrible. He completely messed up our floors and wasted a lot of our time. Again, he's a nice guy, which is why we went with him, but he oversold his capabilities, so please keep that in mind before hiring him even for the simplest project. The story is that we had to install some missing flooring (about 250 square foot), sand the floors (about 700 square foot including the 250 square feet of new flooring), and stain it to a light color. Don's price was slightly higher than the other 2 bids, but he wouldn't stop talking about his experience and how beautiful the floors would look in the end, and we took his word for it. The 1st warning sign was that he asked for a 50% deposit. That's illegal in California. I'm a home improvement contractor as well, and I know better than paying for half of a job for a labor only/mostly project (no materials other than four sheets of plywood as we purchased the flooring). After spending about 40 minutes talking to him about not being cool about paying a 50% deposit (10% max is the law), he came to his senses. When he finished staining the floors, he raved about how beautiful they came out. I was pretty excited. When I looked at them later that day, I noticed that the floors look dirty, as if they're covered with white dust. When looking closer during the day, I notice that they looked heavily scratched, and the white color he mixed the stain with settled on the grooves of the floors (see pictures attached). It looked bad. Don suggested that the color is the problem, but it was clear that they did a terrible sanding job. After talking my head off, he finally agreed that their sanding machine is the problem and that they'll need to redo the floors. That added 2 days. After resanding and restaining, Don called me to come to the property and approve the color before he applies the 2nd coat. When I got to the property, while the big scratches their machine left on our new floors were mostly gone, the floors were still not evenly sanded, and again, the floors looked like they're covered with white dust as the white color sipped into the grooves. At that point, Don decided to abandon the project and left us with no flooring contractor. What bummed me the most is that instead of just telling us that the floors do not look right, he kept waiting for us to bring concerns. Otherwise, he would leave things the way there are and collect payment. That's not an honest way to do business. Bad quality of work + dishonesty can never be a good thing. My son has special needs, and Don's lack of trade-related professionalism had left us in great discomfort and added a lot of unneeded stress to our life. Proceed with caution.