Run as far as away as possible if you're considering them for any home improvement work…read more
I had Setter replace a patch of wood flooring in my kitchen and the scratched flooring in the downstairs bedroom. I also asked them to do the room repaint while they were at it.
The job was a disaster on nearly every level. I'm not sure the "pro" they brought on had even installed wood flooring before.
First Attempt:
- Large misaligned gaps between all the boards, and the wall.
- Floor was uneven throughout
- Squeaks in several places.
- In the kitchen, they cut the boards close to the island leaving several inches of lined up cut board, covered in glue.
For the paint job, there were just three cans of paint, that matched with the exist paint. One for the trim, one for the wall, and one for the bathroom wall. They managed to paint the entire room in an obviously different color, and then only "discover" the other paint I had pointed out them later.
The paint job itself was really subpar with patched areas not blending at all, and any are of detail looking messy.
Second attempt:
After complaining about the issues. Setter promised to fix it for me and send out a supervisor as well
This meant they sent back the same unqualified pro to try and fix his mistakes. And the person they had to supervise showed up once or twice for a couple of hours.
He tore out all the wood flooring he had used in the first pass and threw it away. And by throw it away, I mean he left it in the rain outside my house in a garbage bag, and never actually disposed of it or any of the other trash on the job site.
All of the flooring is expensive Brazilian Chestnut hardwood that I bought. Like the paint, Setter never reimbursed me for this. Even worse, the flooring is discontinued. I spent months tracking down the last few boxes of the flooring so that the repairs would match. So now, any future repairs or projects are impossible.
At the end of the second attempt, the gaps were improved but still pretty bad by any flooring standard. Even worse, he managed to heavily damage the new wood being installed. And there's still a huge gap in the flooring in the kitchen/fridge area. Their supervisor said it couldn't be fixed, and the best he could do was put in more baseboard to cover it. What he actually did was just put in a random piece of wood on top of of the gap.
Applying the Finish:
At this point I was 2.5 weeks into what they had quoted as a 3-4 day job. The still had to apply a simple top coat finish to match the sheen I had on the existing flooring and fix up their paint job.
Applying finish for a small bedroom is a quick 2 hour job. Their "pro" took the full day to do it, and the entire coat was filled with bubbles, hair, and other debris the next day. He blamed it on the heater having turned on, and then spent 1-3 days sanding down the bubbles and then reapplying the coat. Afterwards there were again bubbles, and the heater was never turned on.
More complaints to Setter and they brought in and their supervisor took over. He spent more than a week sanding the topcoat bubbles for a ~125 sq ft room. He also suggested applying wax as a coat instead of reapplying the finish. I told him to do what he thought would match with the original flooring. He went the wax which doesn't match the existing flooring at all.
In the kitchen, where the replaced wood was much smaller I asked them to try using the same finish again after the sanding process. But the sanding wasn't polished out, leaving obvious swirls underneath the new finish. And the finish was applied with a brush leaving obvious brush marks in the finish
Baseboards & Repaint:
After replacing the floor and applying the finish, they had to reattach and re-caulk/repaint the baseboards and touch up their earlier paint job.
The baseboards, weren't lined up evenly and the caulking/paint joins looked like a first grader coloring outside the lines. Throughout the room there were little dents and holes, and any part of the job the required attention to detail demonstrated a shocking lack of it
Final Insults:
After all this and even acknowledging the remaining issues in the paint and gaps in the flooring. Their "pro" asked me to sign a statement saying I was satisfied with their work.
A few weeks later their billing kept trying to contact me to bill me for the "extra" work they had done, telling me that I was delinquent. Whatever bill they were talking about was never delivered to me in app, in text message or email. The followup work was supposed to be guaranteed to be free to fix their earlier mistakes.
If anything Setter should be paying me for time and money lost. Not only did Setter force me to pay for their poor work, but I will have to find an actual flooring expert to redo all of their work. And, I haven't been able to rent out the room in the last few months because all of the work is unfinished because of COVID-19.
