Why We're Different

It can be hard to choose a hardwood floor refinishing company when there are so many to pick from. How can you tell the difference between them all?

Below is our 12 reasons why we’re different:

 

vancouver hardwood floor refinishing

A lot of hardwood flooring companies in Vancouver do everything related to floors. They supply all kinds of flooring - solid wood (unfinished and pre-finished), engineered wood and laminate. They also install all of these types of floors. A typical flooring company will install using either the glue down, nail down or floating installation method. On top of all that, they may also sand, refinish and repair hardwood floors.

So in a typical month, the crew may be doing many different types of installations and only occasionally get to sand and refinish a floor. Even if they do 50 percent of each, they are still divided between vastly different skill sets never becoming superior in one, despite what their website may tell you.

Here at Woodsmith Hardwood – all we do is refinish and repair hardwood floors... every working day of the year.

We got out of the installation business years ago and turned all of our focus on becoming the best hardwood floor refinishers in Vancouver. Refinishing floors is what we love and it’s what we’re best at.

 

We know it’s extremely hard to choose a company to work with when you’re paying for something that you won’t see until it’s completed. Even if you’ve seen great references... How do you really know they’ll do a great job on your floors?

It’s not like going shopping for a car where you can go to different car yards and compare price and service on the exact same car. With service businesses, you’re basically taking an educated gamble. That’s not too comforting is it?

Other businesses brag about their paid for Better Business Bureau listing as if that's the magic bullet. Most legitimate hardwood floor businesses in Vancouver have a "A" BBB rating whether they pay for it or don't so this doesn't really do anything to separate a good company from a great one.

We have many raving testimonials on our site like other businesses as well. But I'm sure that we all deep down inside wonder just how truthful some peoples testimonials actually are. (We have proof of all of ours by the way.)

It's because of these reasons, that we are proud to offer an industry first guarantee for hardwood floor refinishing in Vancouver. We feel that if a company is really that good at what they do, they should be able to stand behind their work 100 percent. If they don’t... why aren’t they?

Some of our competitors that are trying as best they can to catch up to us have told us they feel it's a big gimmick and that there is no value in putting a guarantee in writing. I'm sure you can imagine why a business owner would say that. We and many of our clients that trust us to look after their floors beg to differ. You rely on ligitimate guarantees for many things you invest in. Why should the work you're having done on your floors be any different?

We are good at what we do and we’re willing to back it up and prove it without a shadow of a doubt by taking away all of the worries you may have with our 100 percent satisfaction guarantee.

 

The amount of dust is probably one of the biggest initial fears most of our customers have. You’ve probably been more than a little worried about this as well.

It’s a huge problem that has plagued our industry for decades. I’m sure you’ve heard a horror story or two about homeowners still cleaning dust up weeks after they had their floors sanded. Just the thought of cleaning it all up makes you want to put off having your floors sanded for another few months... if not indefinitely.

Thankfully it doesn’t have to be like that anymore. In the past few years, great advancements have been made in the dust containment field. Testing out all of this new dustless equipment became somewhat of a hobby for us.

It hasn’t always been fun... like the time we were trying out a new system and one of the parts came flying off and subsequently shot a whole drum full of fine dust throughout the house! Thank goodness the homeowners were away and we were able to clean up the place before they arrived back. Hours of cleaning – not fun!

Well thankfully those days are now over and we finally decided on a solution that fits perfectly with our needs as well as yours and are now able to offer 99.5% dustless sanding. We have lots of clients that have tried it out and you can read some of their comments on our Pictures and Feedback page.

Click on this link if you’d like to find out more information about our dustless hardwood floor refinishing system.

 

Let’s face it - you want your floors refinished yesterday. The last thing you want is for the process to drag out any longer then needed. Especially if you are having you’re entire house refinished and you have to stay with friends and relatives, or if you’ve just bought the house and you’re in a hurry to move in.

In order to restore floors to a high standard, there is a set number of work hours needed. The only way to reduce the time is to have a full crew working.

If you only have 1 guy sanding your floors it’s obviously going to take more time. We’ve found from our experience over the 15 years we’ve been in business, that a 2 - 3 man crew is the ultimate size to get the job finished with the perfect balance of timeliness and high quality.

 

It’s important to get feedback from homeowners that have used the company you’re considering hiring.

One thing you may notice with many businesses is that they’ll show you the best letters and comments they have from happy customers. This is smart, why wouldn’t they? But if you’re anything like me you’re left wondering just a little bit if they’re real. How can they be verified? Where are the phone numbers?

We’re happy to provide you with countless letters – many of which you can find in our Pictures and Feedback section – but we’re also willing to give you our previous clients phone numbers (with their permission of course) so you can actually phone them up and ask for yourselves if we’re any good at what we do.

We have nothing to hide. We’re happy to give you the number of the client we’re working with right at this moment as well. You can’t get more up to date than that. But, remember it’s also just as important to find out if the quality of work and the products used stand up over time. For this reason we can supply you with phone numbers of clients we’ve continually worked with for well over 12 years.

On page 7 of our Free Guide “The 7 Questions You Must Ask...” you’ll find a list of questions you may want to ask them.

 

This is a great benefit for a couple of reasons. First off, you get to size me up and see if you even want me to be working on your floors.

Secondly, it cuts out any misunderstandings that could come up if you’re dealing with an estimator and then a separate employee on the actual job. With us it’s all me, me, me... in the good sense.

Thirdly, who wouldn’t want the owner of the company to be working on your floors? It’s his company; he’s the one with his reputation on the line. He’s going to make sure the jobs done right.

 

I can’t stand it when you get a price for something and after it’s all finished they tell you – “Oh, I forgot to add this”... “We spent extra time doing this so I have to charge an extra...”

When you get a written estimate from us, everything will be itemized for you to decide the options you want. That’s the price you’ll pay, end of story. Even if I made a mistake and I have to eat it, you won’t hear about it... I promise.

(The only exception to this is when you decide you’d like to add additional work that’s not included in the original estimate. In these situations, we’ll re-issue an estimate and commence work once you’re happy with the additional price.)

 

We have a secret lab where we do all of our product testing. Actually it’s not so much a lab as an apartment building and it’s not really a secret either. It just sounds cool saying we have a secret lab to carry out all of our top secret, classified floor experiments.

A very good friend of ours owns an apartment building in Vancouver. Whenever there is a suite that needs refinishing, we get called in to do our magic. If there’s any new techniques or products we want to try out, that’s where we experiment.

You wouldn’t believe the amount of different finishes that are in that building. Almost every suite has something different that we’ve sampled. We’ve got cheap, low end big box store finishes all the way up to high end imported Italian 2 component water-based finish systems.

Over the last 9 years, we’ve been able to see first hand, as people move in and out, how well each finish stands up to wear and tear. It’s been very educational. It helps us decide on what systems we can strongly recommend and what we want to use on a regular basis. We never use a new finish on one of our client’s floors unless it has been thoroughly tested in our secret lab... ok, ok... our friend’s apartment building.

This has enabled us to keep up with and stay on top of changes in the industry but not put anyone’s valuable floors at risk.

 

What’s the use of spending all that time and money having your floors refinished if they’re only going to last a few years. Cheap, low quality finish will wear out very quickly with average traffic.

As we talked about above, we’ve tested many types of finish systems and we only offer ones that we know will look good years down the road and can stand up to abuse.

 

Sometimes when we’re sanding a floor, we notice small things that we missed on the initial consultation. We never dismiss these things as no big deal. If it catches my eye and I wouldn’t have it in my house, it won’t be in yours. I’m a self confessed perfectionist when it comes to our craft. Just don’t talk to my crew about this...

So what this means is that if you have old hot water heaters and the machines can’t get under them fully – we’ll scrape and sand them by hand. If you have lots of light coming into a room and I feel that using the buffer in-between coats will show too many swirl marks in the sunlight – we’ll hand sand the entire floor.

I think you get the idea. This isn’t about production work for us. We love the work we do and we leave our reputation behind on every hardwood floor we refinish. We want you to be ecstatic. The little bit of extra time we spend on each job is definitely worth it.

 

It’s kind of sad that we have to put this in here as something we’re different at. Most tradesmen have the terrible reputation of being tardy and not seeming to care about it.

I hate it when I have to call a plumber or the telephone company out and they say they’ll be there between a period of a few hours.

My time is valuable and so is yours. I promise that if we’re going to be even 10 minutes late, I’ll give you a call to let you know we’re around the corner and are on our way. This includes estimates as well as for showing up for work each day if you haven’t left us with a key.

 

Ok, if you’ve made it down this far, you’ve put up with enough of my rambling on. This one will be short. We have full Liability Insurance coverage for $2,000,000.00. That’s 2 million dollars. Anything goes wrong, we’re covered.

We also are fully up-to-date with our WCB coverage. Any accidents that happen around or in your home by any one of us will be fully looked after.

Please feel free to ask if you can look at our policies or for our WCB number, I’ll be happy to show you.


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So there you have it – 12 reasons why you should hire us to restore your hardwood floors. Of course I haven’t mentioned the fact that we have the best looking, hunkiest, entertaining as well as humblest hardwood floor refinishing crew in Vancouver... but I guess that goes without saying.

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