The Floor Guys

As soon as Dan and I confirmed that we had lead paint on our floors upstairs, we knew that we were going to have to be careful about who we hired to do the sanding and refinishing. Since we decided to go ahead and get estimates, the people we've contacted have basically fallen into three camps:

1) The Blank Starers
These are the guys who come highly recommended on Angie's List, respond to our inquiry right away, show up on time, seem to be knowledgable, and give us a great price. Then, when we ask them about how they will handle the lead paint, they give us a blank stare, followed by comments about how they will put tape over the vents and blow the dust out the window. Um, no.

2) The "No Way"ers
These are the guys who respond with, "Sorry, we don't do that." No further explanation--or if there is an explanation, it basically amounts to something along the lines that dealing with lead paint is just not worth what they would have to spend on the equipment needed, or that they only do floor installations but not refinishing. The e-mail equivalent of a "Hell no."

3) The "I Just Like Extra Pieces of Paper"ers
These are the guys who have gone to the trouble of getting EPA-certified to deal with lead but apparently have no real intention of putting that cerification to use. They can do it, but they don't want to do it. Which makes me wonder why they bothered to get certified in the first place.

We've put out over a dozen inquiries and have found one and only one company that is certified by the EPA to deal with lead, that does floor refinishing, and that was willing to schedule a time to come out for an estimate. However, even when I scheduled that appointment, the receptionist I talked to said, "He [the guy who does the floors] is certified to deal with lead but I don't know if he likes to deal with it." So she was going to check with him and let me know if for some reason he wouldn't do it. So now we're just keeping our fingers crossed that the appointment for the estimate (which is scheduled for the 22nd) will still stand.

We're going to keep digging around so we're not hanging all our hopes on one company (and so we can get more than one estimate), but right now it's hard to be too hopeful about finding someone else who can do it. We can't believe how hard this has been given that a) there are literally thousands of EPA-certified companies in the Philly area (but not many of them do floor refinishing) and b) the majority of the homes in this area are older, meaning that there's lots of lead paint out there and that we cannot be the only ones with this problem. I suppose people either hire the "blank starers" or just put down carpet.

I, for one, am not ready to admit defeat. I did not buy a 1928 house with original wood floors to cover them in carpet, always knowing that beautiful floors are lying somewhere underneath all the carpet and paint. In a metro area of over 6 million people, there has got to be at least one person out there who will refinish our floors the right way, and we will find that person!

Until that happens, this whole thing has got us pretty frustrated and stressed out. Could we please at least get this part started so we can hold out hope that one day we will be sleeping in an actual bedroom and not on the dining room floor? Sigh.