Contractor Bails out Georgia Family from Flooded Floors

If you've owned a home for any length of time, you likely have a story about minor or major repairs. It could be the charming vintage house with old two-prong electrical outlets or drafty windows in need of upgrading. Or it could be the newly built home where a handful of final touches were left off the punch list.

In the case of Alysia Mize of Alpharetta, Ga., it was the great kitchen flood that happened on a clear day.

"I had put one of my daughter's shirts in the laundry room sink to soak, so I turned the water on full blast, got busy with something else, and then left the house for about 90 minutes," she says. "When I returned, there were a couple of inches of water on the floor."

While the cause was amusing, the damage was not. The overflow streamed out of the laundry room onto the adjacent white oak kitchen floor. It then seeped through floor joints and into the home's finished lower level. Faced with that trail of disaster, Alysia and her husband, Hannis, turned to S and S Flooring—a HomeAdvisor contractor that their home builder also endorsed.

When Arthur Sir and his wife, Sharon, sized up the job, the challenges became clear. While only a section of the kitchen floor was damaged enough to merit replacement, the home's open design meant they would need to sand and restain all surrounding hardwood in order to ensure a perfect match. So, while the Mize family relocated to a hotel for seven days during the work, Sharon became the liaison for daily project updates.

"One of our biggest strengths is how we communicate with our customers," she says. "We let them know what we were doing each day and, at the end of the day, what progress we had made."

In the end, the results exceeded the family's expectations. The job was done on time and within budget, and Arthur's team saved the family extra expense by moving all main-floor furnishings into the garage during the project. Meanwhile, Sharon covered all shelves and knick-knacks in the area with plastic sheeting, protecting them from dust during sanding.

Because of the professional way in which S and S Flooring handled this project, the Mize family awarded the company a five-star rating on HomeAdvisor.com for communication, quality and overall service. Alysia Mize hailed the value of a customer-driven resource to find prescreened contractors.

"Instead of just picking someone at random out of the phone book, you're getting a preferred contractor who will get the job done right," she says.