I'm stressed!

When we moved into this house a little over a year ago we noticed that our floors, which were stained concrete, were not done properly. There was moisture trapped under the wax, and it was very dull and splotchy and scuffed real easily. They were really driving me crazy and John wasn't hearing the end of it. So he asked around and called a concrete guy to see if he could fix them while we were out of the country.

The guy said he would refinish the floors but he wouldn't strip them because it was such a pain to do and oh-so-time consuming. Well he was right. We spent the two weeks leading up to our trip to Mexico, moving furniture around and stripping the floors square foot by square foot. Can you imagine me, with my 5 kids at home all day long, Ava crawling around everywhere, trying to do this job? It has been stressful to say the least!

I was concerned however, because even after two coats throughout the house, there were still many sticky spots that just wouldn't budge. Because we were still living here, every crumb and blade of grass and cat hair and little paint chips from the stripping gel that inadvertently came off with the paint remover-- were permanently sticking to the floor. I was getting really stressed out about it, so I called the guy to come look at it. He assured me that before they would lay the coat down they would use Xylene, whatever that is and scrape up the remaining areas, and that they would vacuum thoroughly to make sure nothing would be sealed under it.

The night before we left we were up til 1:30 a.m. moving all the furniture off the floor and giving it one last scrub down with a brush before they came that week.

So imagine how horrified I was to walk into my house from our vacation to see that not only did they not remove the sticky parts before applying the sealer and wax, apparently they didn't even vacuum! All the bits of stickiness, paint chips, grass pieces and even a long black string, even lint from the dryer, are permanently imbedded in my floors! Not only that, there are shellacked dog prints in my kitchen! And this morning we are seeing pockets of moisture popping up here and there. The same reason we decided to redo it in the first place. They claim there was a big windstorm and that they had to work with the doors open and that the dog kept trying to come in the house and they were just trying to finish the job before we came home the next day. Um.....HELLO? They had our phone number and they could have easily called and said it was not a good day and they would have to reschedule. They never even called! We have emailed and called back and forth expressing our dissatisfaction, and they are basically saying they did the best they could do considering the circumstances and refuse to even meet us until we fork over half the payment.

I am completely stressed out over this! These people are demanding their payment. In the meantime I looked them up in the Better Business Bureau and found out they have been reported there 4 times! I don't know why we didn't think to look before. I have sent pictures to another concrete business to see what needs to be done, and they said it will definitely need to be restripped, resealed and rewaxed.

Does anyone have some great advice on how to handle this mess?!

Here are some photos of before:(the night before we left...after we stripped the floors)




And after: (I like the before better, don't you?)

Paint chips from the baseboard, stuck in the sticky areas

a piece of dried grass

a long black string

more grass

dryer lint!

cat hairs?

Seriously what should we do?????