Higgins Hardwood Flooring Inc

Thank you so much for the excellent job this company has done. They took our very tired floors and made them shine. Highly recommendable,
Thank again Wim & Sharon Kuilder

We have a 1840's stone farm house and used Higgins four or five years ago. We were very pleased with their work and engaged them recently for a much simpler, smaller job. Its been a disaster! A very big mistake
To start off with Higgins (new?) management is incompetent beyond comprehension. Schedules are meaningless to them. Our four or five day job took nearly a month and the standard of work was dire. A small part of the floor needed patching; two guys eventually turned up, four hours late and while one plugged away the other sat in his van chain smoking and talking on his cell phone. The standard of the floor repair made the rest of the work a waste of time and money.
Avoid these people.

This review is long overdue as this project was complete almost three years ago. We hired Higgins to match the existing hardwood and extend it through our kitchen and to the front of our house. The complete floor (old and new) was sanded and stained.

They did an excellent job of matching the wood so it looks seamless. But my praise ends there. Below are a list of my complaints:

Some of the the planks in the new section have a lot of give and move when you stand on them. Some section are raised and uneven.

We had to reinforce a step into our laundry room as it felt like it was going to give way every time we stepped on it.

The colour was not what I had selected. When I called to complain after the staining they told me that it would darken when they put the sealer on. Nope. It still wasn't close to what I had chosen. And they didn't leave extra stain as I was told would happen.

But my biggest complain was the sealer. The guy who did it splashed sealer all over the bottom of my brand new kitchen that was in the process of being installed. It's still there to this day. Higgins did not respond to this complaint.

Now a few years later, the sealer is actually pealing off in several places on the floor.

The guy who did the sealing was inconsiderate of my time and would never let me know when he was coming. I would get a call saying I'll be there in 10 minutes. When I said I wasn't home his response was "we don't have to do the sealing".

Never again will I use or recommend Higgins.

Our Ashwood floors were worn, stained and scratched when we purchased our house. Higgins came in while we were on vacation, so weren't at all inconvenienced by their workers.
When we arrived home, we thought they had laid a brand new floor. The result was stunning! They had taped all the baseboards, sanded and filled the cracks, and laid down three layers of urethane to seal in the beauty. We are SO pleased with their work.

Hired Higgins to redo our hardwood Aug. 21/13. Paid for filler for our floor $399.00. Filler was never done, so they took the $399.00 off our bill. Now they are trying to charge an extra charge for stairs that we did pay for and is on our quote by them. This is ridiculous. Not very happy with Higgins sorry to say.

We were recommended to this company. I had seen their work and had the confidence that they would do a great job. We have red pine plank floors. Mike the Sales Rep came out to the house 30 days prior to the work being done. I walked Mike to four water stains on our hardwood floor. Asking him if each stain could be sanded out. With every water stain MIke's response was, "yes this will come out." The estimate was done and the date was set. The first day, Chris and Dan showed up on time to sand and apply one coat. This is when I realized Mike hadn't done a great job explaining my options of finishes. I told Chris we were having the gymnasium finish (high gloss). Your having an oil based finish, Chris asked me? While Chris and Dan were sanding I started googling. There are two different types of finishes oil and water. Oil has more of a smell, has better durability then water finishes. Do your research to make an informative decision. Chris and Dan recommended oil. Mike hadn't given me a choice or discussed my options. Instead Mike had written down a water based finish. The next morning we walked on the hardwood floors and none of the water stains had been removed. Samantha the office Manager was called. I was told it was not written under "Special Notes" on the estimate. Therefore, it was not included in the contract. Make sure you get everything in writing. Mike was more concerned with us removing the furniture and having ample power under special notes. Mike was on holiday and wasn't available the week our floors were being done. Instead, Samantha arranged to have Ceasar the Foreman come to our home on the second day. Ceasar suggested applying bleach to lighten the stain. If we were told by Mike a month earlier he couldn't guarantee the stains would be removed; we would have looked at different options. Such as flipping the board or replacing the board. (all pine eventually becomes an amber colour). Time wasn't on our side. Our Daughter was away at camp and we didn't want her breathing the fumes. We had made arrangements to have the rooms cleaned, painted and the movers to move back in. We were very disappointed this expectation had not been met. We lost trust in Higgins Flooring. The water stains did lighten slightly overnight, given more time, we would have had better results. Two days later the final coat was being applied. The night before I received a call from Samantha, the cheque must be ready before the final coat is down. I felt this was unfair. How as a customer am I to know if the work has been completed to my satisfaction? If I pay in full will they come back if there are problems? I wrote a post dated cheque for four business days later along with a letter of explanation. Felt this was a fair compromise to allow me to walk the hardwood floors to see if there were any areas that needed to be corrected. I had a less then friendly phone call with Samantha. Samantha demanded the cheque's date be changed. During the same day (Friday), I spoke with Tammy one of the owner's. Tammy listened to my reasons and complaints. At the end of the conversation I came away feeling that I had been told by Tammy that Mike would never have said the water stains could be removed. Tammy would not believe Mike would have said this. I was made to feel like I was distorting the truth. Tammy repeatedly asked me if we would have done things differently. Of course we would have! Samantha arranged for Mike to come to our home at 9:00 am Monday to walk the floor and receive a new cheque. This time I had my Husband present. Yes, Mike did admit to both of us, that he told me the stains could be removed. No compensation or discount. Asked me the same questions Tammy asked, would you have done things differently? Seems to be a Higgins line when they have client dissatisfaction. We withheld 25% of the amount owing. Mike felt it should have been 5%, I pointed out to Mike, why would you come back for $50 outstanding? Mike assured me Higgins would be there. There were four areas that needed correction. The landing had one coat only and needed to have three more coats. The door ways all had pooling. This time I had Mike put this in writing before I wrote a cheque. The first visit took care of the pooling in the door ways. The landing required a second visit. Ken who did the coats felt a second visit wasn't necessary. We did not agree. The office was agreeable to having Ken come out the next day. The work was completed. We love the look of the hardwood floors, we felt we should have been given the truth about the water stains and looked at a better solution then bleaching. The water stains and the demand for payment in full prior to the job being completed. Not being allowed to walk the floors to inspect them after completion is why I cannot recommend this company. There is no warranty with the hardwood floors. I felt there should have been written material with aftercare intructions. We moved our furniture in two days later. We already have scratch marks in three areas and Higgins solution was to re sand the floors. On the first day of us moving in we have less then perfect floors. This would have happened with any company. You have to wait two weeks for the floors to cure, if you don't want to cause any scratches or dents in your floors. Hope this helps anyone thinking of using Higgins Flooring.

I had my floors refinished by Higgins in the fall of 2011. I had a very pleasant conversation over the phone to set up the work. The foreman came by to do an estimate. He was very polite and seemed knowledgeable enough. The estimate seemed fair and the work was to be scheduled while i was out of town so vacating the premises wasn't an issue. I couldn't have been happier that everything was working out so easily.

Then I got home. The floors were still wet even though they were supposed to finish days before my arrival. So I had to make last minute arrangements for somewhere to stay.
Once I was able to move back into my house I started to find the problems. One portion of my hallway has the wood strips running perpendicular to the hall. The large sanders used for floors have to be used with the grain. This means they had to do the hallway portion by hand. Boy can you ever tell they did this portion by hand!! If you stand back and look down the hall the floor waves at you now.
There are also a number of places that the finish wasn't even applied smoothly. Weather this was a cleaning issue between sanding and coats or just a rushed job, who knows. There is definitely no way you could slide in your socks a la Risky Business that's for sure.

Also, the windows in my house are the type that slide up and down but also tilt inwards so you can clean the outside... the clips, which release the window to tilt, were broken off somehow on all but two windows. Meaning a slight breeze could push the window open. Fantastic when winter was right around the corner!!

The scope of work changed slightly, which was discussed and agreed upon over the phone while I was away. However, I never received an updated bill/work order showing a new balance. It was a few weeks before I heard anything from them. The lady I spoke with had quite an attitude explaining how "the balance is due upon completion!!" which I informed her would gladly happen once I had a bill showing the updated work. In hindsight I wish i never sent them the balance.

Instead of doing the work myself, I had Higgins come in because I wanted a professional level of service. What i got was amateur at best. I got to fix my own windows and my hall greets me every morning with a wave.

I wouldn't recommend this company to anyone. Do the work yourself. Even the most novice handyman could easily achieve an equivalent product.

We asked around, and were referred to Higgins when we needed to refinish our floors. We had the Tembec steamed birch floors installed only a few years prior, but our dog's nails had scratched them up pretty badly.

The refinishing job - sanding and sealing - was to take a few days, so we stayed at my mother in law's. We went back to the house afterward, a Friday morning, and the crew assigned had not come back to finish. We later learned they had gone fishing. Because it was the weekend, nothing could be done, and we were not able to return home. We had not packed for this long away. Mr. Higgins himself came to do the final coat.

When it was all said and done and we returned, we were very dismayed to find that the varnish had been splashed on the walls, kitchen cabinets in several places, and even spilled on our brand new carpet (3 weeks old) at the door of the bedroom. Mr. Higgins tried to help me remove this, but it is still a hard, crusty stain on a light berber. The walls need to be sanded as we tried to repaint over the splashes, but they appear as shiny bumps.

In our master bedroom, there are spots were it appears varnish pooled and then dried, and several spots were pieces of hair were not vacuumed up before varnish was applied, resulting in the appearance of hair on the floor when it was long picked out of the finish. I am VERY unhappy with the final results and the mess. I wish at the time that I had pursued it further instead of just paying the bill, but Mr. Higgins had come back already, and I was going through a lot at the time and didn't have the patience or energy to continue with this.

Very dismayed and unhappy. Not recommended.

We had some really rough hardwood floors in our back room, part of the room was tile that I had ripped out. The new floor that they installed matches the old section that was refinished exactly, you wouldn't be able to tell where one part ends and the other begins. They did a really good job.

When they arrived on site they were very friendly and told us just what to expect about the work. They stained many samples so we could see on site how each color would look. They did a fine job at sanding and an exceptional job of cleaning up.