We had one room in our house that we wanted to upgrade including some nice sustainable flooring. We did a lot of searching on different flooring materials and narrowed it down to cork and bamboo when we came in to Tamalpais Hardwood Floors. Leonie an associate was there, and she helped us through the different cork and bamboo options they could offer, and asked if we would like to take any sample boards home. She also put us in touch w/ Dermot the owner, who had excellent questions for us.
Initially I had thought we'd want cork in the room we were redoing, and Dermot walked me through the properties of cork that would be excellent for some uses and not so much for others. As it turns out, the room we were redoing needed a solid hardwood-like finish but sustainably harvested--bamboo, in other words. But I wanted some cushion and insulation, and a layer of cork underneath the bamboo was a great solution and something Tamalpais Hardwood Floors is very accustomed to doing from working in other Marin households.
We in Marin often have issues w/ floor moisture or uneven slabs due to hill slippage. Dermot at Tamalpais Flooring has many, many years of experience with exactly that, and he inspects the slabs personally before making a bid on what will need to be done. In our case, the cork underlay w/ bamboo floor was the perfect answer to what we wanted.
After the initial assessment by Dermot himself comes a prep job (in our case done by an excellent and very nice person called David). Then was the laying of the cork and the flooring in one day (in our case done by a team of three great people called Nelson, Omar, and Gil). There was a little follow up finishing done by Nelson and Omar shortly after.
Then we had another company in to do some other unrelated indoor work, and one of the people inadvertently put a giant scratch in our brand new floor. The company responsible for the damage agreed to pay Tam Floors to do the repair, and Dermot sent out a person called Ysidro to do the repair of the damaged flooring plank. Ysidro was extremely conscientious about doingt the repairs without damaging any of the surrounding floor planks--he labored to make sure it was done perfectly, which it was.
All told, our experience w/ Tamalpais Hardwood Flooring has been excellent. The people in the showroom are knowledgeable and accommodating--and you can bring home several flooring samples for several days so you can get a good idea of what you like when it's in situ. The owner Dermot is easy-going and very reasonable--the best kind of person to deal with when you're doing this kind of work. The workers who come out to do the work are generally good and do a fine job, and if there's ever a problem, someone will come right out to see that it's fixed. The people are polite and pleasant to deal with--which can be such a breath of fresh air if you've done a lot of home renovation.
4.9 out of 5 stars for Tamalpais Hardwood Floors for doing such a lovely job on our floors and for being such easy-going and sweet people to deal with. Tiny, tiny bit off for just ever so much tardiness in returning some contacts, but that's very par for the course, and I think Tam Floors does a much better job in this regard than anyone else around. When I would call Tam Floors back again, they knew exactly who I was and what I wanted and were very nice to me as they worked me through the issue.
My highest recommendation goes to Tamalpais Hardwood Floors as the first choice and best choice for anyone doing their reflooring jobs. Absolutely trustworthy, and absolutely delightful people to work with.
When we do more flooring work in our place, we won't bother with shopping around again--we already know Tamalpais Hardwood Floors is the best.
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