The Floor Sanders, Inc

Two hundred and three ratings on HomeAdvisor, 66 on Google, 32 on Angi — and in all three, the same first name keeps surfacing. Varouj Nersesian has been sanding and refinishing Boston hardwood since, the company says, 1983, when it started as a home service and later took on commercial floors. BBB lists the business as a sole proprietorship at 119 Braintree Street in Allston, and the company puts itself at 43 years in the trade. The work is narrow on purpose: hardwood installation, sanding and refinishing, laminate, and wood athletic floors for gyms and studios. Its own site names a service area running from Boston out through Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, Quincy, Waltham and Winchester. Houzz pegs typical jobs anywhere from $500 to $50,000, which matches a shop that will do a single stair run or an entire building. The review history runs deep — 54 reviews across nine sources going back to 2013 — and it skews strongly positive, with Google at 4.9, Angi at 4.8 and HomeAdvisor at 4.6. Speed and responsiveness are the recurring notes across that history, along with careful dust control. HomeAdvisor also lists memberships in the National Wood Flooring Association and the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association, the latter squaring with the athletic-floor side of the business. The caveat sits in the finish and the patchwork. A March 2026 reviewer who had old Douglas fir refinished and patched after a remodel called the crew professional and said they came back several times to work through problems, but landed at three stars and only somewhat happy with the result. Angi's profile carries a detailed two-star account of a polyurethane finish that bubbled and peeled. Two complaints against a decade-plus of praise is not a pattern, but they point at the same part of the job: how well the coating holds and how well new boards blend into old ones. One housekeeping item: the licensing record that shows up publicly is a Rhode Island contractor registration on BuildZoom, listed active but not re-checked since January 2010, with other entries for the same number marked cancelled. Massachusetts exempts flooring-only work from some registration requirements, so ask directly what they carry for your job and get proof of insurance. This is the crew to call for straightforward sanding and refinishing on a tight schedule, or for a gym or studio floor where few residential shops compete. If your project involves weaving new boards into an old floor, ask how they'll match and blend, how many coats you're paying for, and what happens if the finish fails.