We recently spent a good amount of money to have our inside stairs, landings, railings, and balusters done. The person who did the work did not do staining so we looked around and found Mike to stain two landings of hardwood flooring, 4 sets of 6 step stairs with risers, railings, and all of our balusters from our stairs to our railings. Mike came and sanded everything and then proceeded to stain everything. At first everything looked good and then came time to urethane. He laid 3 coats of urethane on and painted the balusters and wall skirt boards. It looked good at first, but after the urethane started to dry a couple of days later we realized that it was bubbling, I don't just mean a little bit it was everywhere and a lot of it. His prep work for the staining could have been better because when prepping, glue around the railings were not totally removed before staining in all spots. We also noticed that he did a sloppy job painting leaving brush marks and paint runs on our balusters and wall skirts. After looking at the painting I realized i would have been better off waiting and spending the time to do it myself. I did some research and found out there are a couple of things that can cause this, room temp, old cheap paint brushes, and old urethane. Well room temp is out cause the thermostat was set at 70 degrees. We also found brush hairs stuck in some parts of our urethane underneath the last coat. I contacted mike about it and he said he would come take a look at it. Upon arrival he continued to blame dust for the problem, even though you could tell it was clear urethane bubbles, but said he would take care of it for us anyway. After blowing me off for a week and a half after he was already paid, he finally showed up to redo the job. He came in and sanded all the wood surfaces all over again and laid a coat of urethane while I was at work. When I came home to look at it, it was much smoother than before and had very minimal bubbles on it. The only problem is that when you really look at it you can see a couple of bush bristles in the urethane and small pits that are under the urethane in one of the previous coats that he didn't sand down far enough to get rid of. We didn't mention anything about the balusters and wall skirts because we were afraid that he would ruin our stairs while trying to correct them and would just blow through them like he did our stairs sloppy. Overall I am sorry i used them and never would again, I was wrong they weren't the best choice, not even close.
Staining and urethane very poor first time, better but not as good as it should have been the second time. Prep work for the staining could have been better because when prepping, glue around the railings were not totally removed before staining in all spots. read more