For me, the true test of a company within the construction industry is how they deal with issues…read morethat arise when things don't go perfectly. The short version of this review is that this company, Coveted Coverings (CC), responded when the floor was not completely covered and finished due to fickle nature of dealing with epoxy floors. They had to come back to the job site after thinking all was finished, and apply a totally new surface coat, through a complicated (and expensive!) process to make sure the new surface adheres to the previous. The point is that they came back, redid the surface coat, and left us with a very nice floor--exactly what we wanted. This costed them time and money, since they did not charge us for the final coat. From our perspective, you can trust these guys to do the right thing, and leave you with a high-quality result. Not only that, but they are friendly and easy to work with.
For those who prefer more detail, this is what happened at our house. We agreed to do a flake floor on a wooden subfloor (plywood) that had lots of gross imperfections, from the screw/nail holes to the butt joints and other cracks. All the imperfections had to be filled with an epoxy paste. Then they do the main epoxy layer that they added just enough to fill in some of the worst dips in the floor, followed by the flake layer, ending with the surface coat. The CC guys showed up when they said they would, were professional throughout and the first few layers went great. They took a severely flawed subfloor and made it such that we couldn't tell. The problem arose in the top coat: they ran out of epoxy just before the end of the floor. Ninety percent was done, but the last few feet just didn't get covered right. This was after they showed up with 15-20% extra epoxy to make sure this doesn't happen.
As an aside, one of the things I appreciate the most from this process, is that I learned quite a bit about epoxy flooring from these guys. They were patient with all my annoying questions, basically teaching me what I didn't know. I had been fooling around with epoxy for a while, and thought I knew how to do what they were doing. In fact, when they gave me the quote for the project, it was more expensive than I expected and I thought we could do it ourselves, since I was now such an expert in Epoxy (yeah, right). Watching them closely and asking questions, I learned just how much I didn't know, and suitably humbled, I have gained a much deeper appreciation for what has to be done. One of the things I learned is that it is very difficult to get the quantities right, and just buying (and charging the customer) way more, has its own set of problems (like how do you store the extra, what conditions does it require, how soon does it degrade, etc). Apparently this is especially true for wood floors, where the absorption rate and imperfections vary so widely. So, it's completely understandable that they ran out of epoxy, despite their expertise and planning.
Once they took a look at the unfinished floor, they didn't argue, and simply went through the process of planning and executing the final coat (again). They had to go through the process of abrading (sanding, basically) the now-cured surface, using some chemical processes to further prepare the surface for bonding with the new surface coat, and finally applying the new layer. This took a full day, and they had to buy all the materials and soak up the time. They did all this without complaint or issue, and did not charge a cent more than we had already agreed upon.
I felt a bit bad that they had to take a loss and tried to pay them more, but they refused. Exceedingly rare for construction firms these days.
Bottom line: I trust these guys, and got to see firsthand how epoxy floors can be done right. In hindsight, the price was not too high--it was my ignorance and assumptions that made it seem so. To be fair, they were not the lowest bid (nor were they the highest), but they aren't greedy and are building their business the right way: by doing good work at a fair price and taking full responsibility for what they promise. I can't point to many other outfits we've hired to do construction related projects that take the care that they showed.
