I've had two horrendous experiences within two years and that is more than enough for me. In Sept. 2011 I had some Urban hardwood floors installed by this co., primarily staple down job, for a small one bedroom upstairs condo. They also installed carpeting in the bedroom and baseboards throughout. All in all I was pretty thrilled with the job, but that only lasted a little while. I was advised by their salesman Mark to use Bona cleaner and polish on my floors. As a homeowner, I would never put anything on my brand new hardwoods that I wasn't told I could use. The products were inexpensive at Home Depot. The Bona cleaner worked great. Then, a year later, since I had never used the polish, I decided to give it a go, assuming it was comparable to Pledge. To my horror, the liquid waxy polish embedded any minor lint or hairs into the floors and so I had to order the Bona polish remover to remove all of it which took me over 15 hours to remove and still there was traces of it everywhere. In the end, the polish totally destroyed my floors with cracking, snapping and popping everywhere. Truly a nightmare. I come to find out it's all over the internet how horrible the Bona polish is and not to use it. The acrylic in the polish is not compatible with the polyurathane floors. When Mark came out to inspect my floors, he told me to take it up with Bona. Bona was no help and I ended up filing a claim with my insurance co. Thankfully my insurance co. paid for it, and so I decided to have Lawrence do the installation a second time since their contractor Anthony and his crew did such a great job the first time. I was really thankful to get him and his team back again, and I didn't make a big deal about orig. being told the polish was alright to use. Plus they gave me a good deal on the job the second time around. The job was done beg. of Dec. 2012. They did the job in exactly the same amount of time as the first job, approx. 2 1/2 days. Unfortunately, this time, the floors never settled down like they did the first time and as the Summer time came there was major cracking, snapping and popping again with the swelling of the floors. How could this be possible when I used the exact same contractor and his crew for install? I got Mark to come out and inspect but he just told me it was my foundation settling (my condo. is 29 yrs. old) or my neighbor's temperatures and he assured me it would get better over time. But 6 weeks later come mid-August the situation was out of control and I knew I was never going to be able to live with the broken floors. I told Mark I need to get the contractor back to inspect everything and I also called the regional rep for Urban too. Could it be defective wood? All three of them came to my house at the same time and the Urban rep Tyler shockingly tried to say that I or my adjoining neighbor had a water leak somewhere that was causing the damage. So I called my insurance co. again to file another claim and had my rep and an environmental restoration specialist come over to inspect. They readily determined there was no leak as they could see no wood cupping, buckling or wood discoloration anywhere and began to ask me if the wood was acclimated to my house before it was installed. I told them only for 1 day, just like the first time. My insurance co. advised me they would not pay the claim this time due to a bad install job but they would pay for an expert to come out and do a report. The expert's findings in fact determined the failure of the floors to be because of lack of proper acclimation prior to the install. The difference betw. the first and second job was the first time the job was done in Sept., the weather was approx. 80 degrees. Second time it was Dec. and approx. 50 degrees. The Urban installation instructions specifically say how critical it is that your heaters be up and running for 14 days prior to install and how the wood should be acclimated to your home for a minimum of 3-5 days prior to installation with the temp. ranging betw. 60-80 degrees, which it was not. The subject of this acclimation time or my heat being turned on never once came up in conversation with either the salesman or the contractor and his crew. The cartons of wood should also be opened at both ends with the plastic wrap cut allowing air to circulate which also wasn't done. So when I brought the expert's report in to the shop and handed it to Mark, he told me he really doesn't pay much attention to acclimation because some manufacturers recommend it while others do not. I told him that's really unfortunate because this mfg. does recommend it, the install instructions were not followed, and my floors are broken and they need to be fixed for yes, a third time. Then he told me that he is done and they do not want the job. So I told him that I need all my money back. In the end, the owner made good and did refund my money, but now I am back at square one, two years later, needing new flooring. read more
