Opinions/References for a Floor Guy

Joe McKenna should be considered excellent value when one is at the high of the market. His pricing is generally 55%+/- that of Pieser or Spitzer. Which means that you are not paying much of a premium at all.
His quality is second to none. If you have a floor with a lot of open space and or natural light, high level of sheen or you just want your floor to look great and be entirely without tool marks, you should consider using him.
It isn’t just the moisture reading of the wood that is important; its the subfloor and controlling the atmospheric conditions during installation and finishing. These factors will have a direct effect on how the floor looks over time.
The material that he furnishes is of the highest quality and the mill is always first rate.
He is also quite knowledgble when it comes to working on salvaged material.
I have seen floors that were paper thin, no one would touch them and he has done an outstanding job.
He is always trying something new which is important with the changing VOC restrictions. What worked last month, will not necessarly work this month as the products are constantly being revamped. He was THE first flooring guy to be into green products and he continues to be one of the most knowledgable. I just heard that he recently invested in a new dustless sanding system from Germany that works very well.
Lastly, and perhaps most imoprtantly, McKenna is a gentleman. He has plied his trade quietly and dilligently for many years. He charges a fair price and he does the work himself with a small, stable crew. He is at the top of his craft and he got there the old school way: by doing floor after floor, breathing the dust, busting his knees and back and all of the time being uncompromising. I’ve worked around Joe for over twelve years and there are very very few bad experiences associated with Joe McKenna. Ask him for a list of references – he has hundreds of floors for you to look at.

Best Wood Flooring.

They have done many wonderful projects in Brooklyn. He is one of the only floor companies that asks for correct atmospheric conditions when finishing in the summer months. He carries Dehumidifiers & asks for a/c equipment to make sure his finishes dry correctly. His pricing is up there. But his quality level is excellent. Also he does not have 6 crews so you know what you are getting when you hire him It is only Joe & not one of his “crews” this is the biggest issue I find with other floor companies. Who will we get to-day. What is this crews quality like?

Thanks for the comments.

I had a big hassle with Joe, who I would describe as incredibly expensive and who did a couple of very squirrelly things in working with me. He bills himself as the rock star of wood floors and brings a beautiful book of work he has done. I had a whole floor of select red oak original parquet floors complete with walnut and mahagony trim.

I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do with the floors because many of the parquets were damaged by water, pets, they were really a mess. Also, I needed to even out the floors, which were uneven and do support work to joists under the floor.

Anyway, Joe and I came up with a VERY EXPENSIVE plan to remove the parquets, number them, have my contractor do all the repair work, then reinstall the original parquets in the original configuration replacing the damaged parquets (21 parquets) with red oak parquets which he had. It cost 1,000 dollars alone to do the “demo” which is embarrassing to admit. Here’s the catch. Joe never had the right parquets in the first place to replace the damaged ones. He had a different grade, and thickness, which he knew from the start but didn’t share with me.

The last thing I wanted was to spend a fortune to have a patchwork quilt of mismatched parquets.
(Just to be technical – my wood was red oak select, his was quartersawn which looked very different next to my floor). Anyway, he sprung this info on me AFTER I paid him for the demo.
I should have gotten my first clue when he quoted one price to me, but then before we were about to start he said that is the price when you pay in cash, i.e. no proper receipt, which was our first hassle. I had to stop the check and then have a “renogiation” of the fee, and then fire him.
Very ugly, very upsetting. I was furious.

By the way, for the half the price Joe quoted me, I got my contractor to go to Premium floors, get beautiful red oak parquet select (different size strips though from the historic skinny strips…), mahoghony and walnut stripping and we recreated the design complete with ornamental borders of original floor. People always comment on how great my “restored” floors look.

Joe may have done other work which was good but my experience with him was very very bad.

I have gotten to know several floor people with my projects if you would like some other names to compare with Joe, please post your contact info.
Honesty is always the best policy and payback is a bitch as they say, but good old Joe has some bad karma hanging over him.