We contracted with EF Marburger to do a professional installation of hardwood flooring. We did not receive a professional installation. Here is a list of all the details that were wrong with the installation.
Gaps/ seams, large enough that staples & tongue are viewable from above.
Unstained wood putty smeared into some gaps & into the surrounding wood grain.
Flooring boards cut too short - gap is visible even with quarter round molding.
Pencil marks on wood.
Poor choice in wood placement -- it looks like the flooring was patched with a different colored product.
Squeaks & groans when the flooring is walked on because the installers did not properly clean the subfloor of staples & debris nor screw the subfloor down as agreed.
Despite our having warned that our kitchen floor was made up of three layers of vinyl & two layers of Luan when measurements were taken, the demo guys were completely unprepared. They had no saws or cutting tools. They had to "borrow" our shovels to pry the flooring up. It took a lot longer than expected & I believe this led to them not having the time to properly secure the subfloor with as many screws as they should have. It was also very dangerous for our kitchen cabinets that had just had new quartz countertops installed on them, as the way they were prying the uncut vinyl flooring up was lifting our kitchen cabinets up off the floor in an uneven way. After the demo we found they had vibrated some ceramic cups we had on a shelf, they just put it on the counter & didn't push the others back on to the shelf or tell us.
Next day was installation. I noticed that they weren't nailing down the flooring but thought maybe they glued it down first. After several rows, I called my wife to come look & said they aren't nailing it. We asked the guy installing why he wasn't nailing it. He seemed to be saying he was told to glue it not nail it. But, being as there was no one who spoke English on the jobsite, it was hard to tell for sure. We told him to stop and he called his boss, Ricky, who was not at our jobsite. They finally admitted we were right it was supposed to be nailed. They had to go get the nails, the nailer & the correct underlayment. 4-5 hours after I stopped the gluing, they finally started installing the flooring again.
They were rushing then to get the job done in the two allotted days & this resulted in the above defects.
When Marburger came we showed them all the problems & that we felt they needed to take it all up & properly clean & secure the subfloor & redo it. They balked at that & said they could fix it. We told them we doubted that but we would let them try. The other contractor came in & put down a lot of wood putty to cover up the staples & the gaps. They replaced the areas where they used a lot of dark wood together & the bigger gaps. In those areas they also properly prepared the subfloor by taking out staples & debris & screwed down the subfloor. They went into the basement & screwed up through the subfloor into the flooring to stop some squeaks. But crawlspace junctions, insulation & walls prevented them from being able to do this everywhere so we are still stuck with half the squeaks we had before.
We told Marburger we were not totally satisfied with the job but they continue to insist the flooring was installed properly & that jars and jars of putty is a perfectly acceptable. While we are willing to accept the floor cosmetically, we are still bothered by the number of squeaks. The only way to give us the $18,000+ job we paid for is to take the floor up & redo it or to give us some remuneration to compensate us for the lower price we are likely going to have to take when we sell our home because of the squeaks. They offered us $350 in a take it or leave it fashion & then further insulted us by saying we never mentioned the squeaky floor before despite it being in my original complaint letter & their field supervisor bouncing on one of the squeaks like he was playing a song.
Marburger's excuse was that because of Covid they didn't have anyone who could supervise the job & because of Covid their better installer (the contractor who did the repairs) was too busy to do the job when they were ready to do it. If they had told us, we need a few more weeks to start your job with the "A-Crew" unless you want us to use our "D-Crew," we would have certainly waited. If after demolition they had said, you have a lot of squeaks but they are because of joists & the subfloor is beyond our abilities, we would have said OK, we'll get a contractor and will call you when it's finished.
We went with Marburger partly because they advertised on a radio show I like & because that personality said they did great work for him. I'd be willing to bet they never sent him the crew we got & would never treat him with the contempt they treated us. I'll include pictures below.
My advice stay away from EF Marburger. Email me at larrymkehoe @ aol for further details. read more