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W R Collins Hardwood Flooring

Local business

3.9(18)· early read
Flooringhardwood floor refinishingdustless sandingfloor patching and weaving

Verified record

License not state-verified. We could not confirm a current registration in the state registry. Insurance is self-reported.
  • Not rated by the BBB

Highlights

  • Dustless sandingcustomers repeatedly reported no dust and no post-job cleanup
  • Invisible patching2013 herringbone repair left the original pattern unbroken
  • Old-floor restoration1890s and 40-year-old houses handled in detailed accounts
  • Schedule reliabilityjobs finished on or ahead of the promised date
  • Free fixesan out-of-estimate repair and a later nick both absorbed
  • Dated recordthe newest readable customer account is from October 2014
  • Stated tenurethe same page gives 25, 40 and 24 years
  • Booking lead timea 2011 customer waited months for a slot
  • Conflicting detailstwo websites and two towns across the listings

W.R. Collins Hardwood Floors is a small family hardwood-flooring outfit run by Bill Collins with his nephew Jason (Jay), working sanding, finishing, installation, patching and restoration. Houzz lists it at Winchester, MA 01890 with phone (508) 662-4153 and website wrcollinshardwood.com; the Angi and HomeAdvisor listing is headed Winchendon and points at a different address for the site, collinshardwoodflooring.com. What the customer record shows is a two-man crew doing careful matching work on old floors. In a 2013 review a homeowner rebuilding an 1890s house described Bill and Jason patching new material into a herringbone floor so the pattern stayed unbroken, installing new boards so the joints hid under the baseboard, and calling ahead when a blizzard threatened the schedule so the other trades could be re-sequenced. In a 2011 account the same customer described Bill's installer, Phong, working fourteen straight hours hand-cutting boards around corners, stairs and plumbing after a previous contractor had walked off the job with too little wood ordered. In a 2012 review a homeowner who took six estimates said Collins came in mid-price and kept spare Red Heart Pine on hand for the repair. Dustless sanding comes up again and again: a 2014 customer wrote there was "zero dust in the house after all that sanding. Zero." A 2012 customer said the process was "truely dustless as promised" and needed no cleanup before moving back in. Others noted the crew finished a week early, absorbed an out-of-scope repair at no extra charge, and came back within a week to fix a nick in a finished floor. A 2012 homeowner left them a key while away for a week and remarked on their trustworthiness. The jobs described run from $1,200 patch-and-refinish work to a $25,000 whole-house floor. The difficulty is age. Every readable account dates from January 2011 to October 2014 — the newest is around twelve years old, and the Houzz profile carries no reviews at all. One 2011 customer waited several months for a slot because the schedule was full, which is the only friction anyone reports. Also worth pinning down: the company states its own age three different ways in the same paragraph — "established by me 25 years ago", "40 years of experience", and "Been in business for 24 years" — with Houzz saying "30 years plus". If you are hiring for detailed patching or restoration of an old floor, this is the kind of record that supports it; ask for jobs completed in the last year or two, confirm which website and address are current, and get the licence and insurance paperwork in writing.

Read the comments

Most recent comments

  • 5.0Oct 1, 2014

    The place looks great! It's absolutely beautiful. Bill & Jay do top quality work and a reasonable price. The patch job was phenomenal and there was zero dust in the house after all that sanding. Zero. Very impressive. And talk about punctual, they finished the job more than a week before they had originally said they would! We could not be more pleased with our new floor!

  • 5.0Feb 1, 2014

    Bill and Jason are total experts at repair, installing and finishing (on time). Very friendly and a pleasure to work with. Showed up on schedule all 4 days and beautiful work!

  • 5.0Aug 1, 2013

    WR Collins did an excellent job on our house. We found the company through Angies list and they did exactly what we were looking for. We have a two story house and they laid new floors upstairs and refinished floors downstairs while replacing the floors in the living room. I am extremely happy with their work and everyone had a great attitude on the job site. The work was done efficiently. I would recommend them to anybody and if I need work in the future I will be calling them again.

  • 5.0Apr 1, 2013

    We used W R collins hardwood floor in a kitchen re-do that we did about 2 years ago. They were an outstanding contractor then, and I'm happy to say that they once again provided top quality work and service with our latest rehab project. A previous owner of our house had taken what was once two bedrooms and turned them into one long bedroom. In doing so, they laid some new hardwood flooring in the places where closets and original walls had divided the two rooms. Because of how this was done, there were obvious seams visible where the two different floors came together. We decided to bring the house back to more of its original footprint by separating the one long room back into two to create a bedroom and a dressing room / home office. When it came to the floors, we knew right away that we wanted to hire Bill Collins again based on our outstanding prior experience with him and his company. Bill Collins came out promptly to look the job over. It was a little complicated in that the original floors in what was to become the bedroom had a herringbone pattern that we really liked. Because of the age of the house, there were gaps between the boards here and there and even a few nicks. We really didn't mind the look of the old floors and weren't ready to do all the flooring over again so we decided just to refinish them. However, they were butted up against newer flooring (of a different width), and in on section, both the old and new floors needed some patching to eliminate an unsightly seam between the two floors. Bill and Jason were able to use new material and patch the floors so that the original floor pattern was unbroken and so that the new and old floors blended in perfectly. I know its hard to visualize without pictures, but take my word for it, they did a great job. They also made sure to install the new boards so that the ends would be covered by the wall baseboard, completely masking the patch. When it came time for them to refinish the floors, they worked with us closely to fit our schedule, working directly with our other subs to coordinate efforts, and even giving us a heads-up when a blizzard threatened the completion date - BIll called ahead of time to tell me that he was concerned that the weather might prevent them from coming, and then recommended schedule changes that would work for both him and our other subs. Sure enough, the blizzard came, but thanks to Bill's pro-active thinking, we still hit our schedule. And of course, the floors looked great when they were finished. They also do a good job putting up plastic to keep the dust to a minimum in the rest of the house, and are careful not to track dust through the house as they bring equipment in and out. I thought that Bill's price was very fair considering the quality of his work, his flexibility and the concern he has for his customers. We expected that he would do a great job based on our previous work with him, and he did not disappoint. From our experiences with him, I highly recommend that if you are considering any hardwood floor work (from installation to refinishing), you should definitely consider having Collins Hardwood Flooring come and give you a quote.

  • 5.0Mar 1, 2013

    They were excellent. I wish I had known about them when I had hardwood floors installed in another home that I owned.

Specializes in

Flooringhardwood floor refinishingdustless sandingfloor patching and weavinghardwood floor installation

Also offers

custom stainingbuffing and coatingstair installswood floor inlaysfloor medallionshistoric floor restoration

Service area

Arlington, MABillerica, MACambridge, MANewton, MAWinchester, MA

Languages

English

Update history

  1. Added 34 new comments, established rating 3.9

    • behind the score: Dated record — the newest readable customer account is from October 2014

What does a hardwood floor cost in Greater Boston?

Typical Greater Boston range for this kind of work, from regional averages — not a quote from W R Collins Hardwood Flooring. Use it to sanity-check bids, then get the real number in writing.

Estimated range

$6,000 – $9,600

Typical flooring project around $7,800

See the full Greater Boston cost guide →

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