My husband and I checked out Frontier's showroom based on reviews on this website. Frank was our initial contact then everything switched to Angelo for some reason. We were very impressed with the information Frank initially gave us when we checked out the hardwood brands in the showroom. We maybe spent 1 1/2 hours there and we were given some samples and brochures to take home. Peter came out to measure our main floor. He was very thorough and he answered all of our questions. He recommended 2 1/4" hardwood since we have a long, narrow house. I did alot of research on the internet and we ultimately decided on the Mirage brand and we went with the 2 1/4" Red Oak in a Vienna cashmere (matte) colour. I can highly recommend the cashmere finish if you go with a darker colour of stain since it doen't show dust, marks etc., as much, even though their semi-gloss is much less shiny than other brands. We also had them score and remove the baseboards, underpad and carpet which is well worth it. It took Peter and Bob a couple of hours to do but it was worth the extra money. We couldn't believe the amount of dust etc., underneath from our builder. My husband spent four hours vacuuming it up. We had 520 square feet of flooring put throughout the main floor, other than in the entranceway, powder room, kitchen and breakfast nook. The Mirage brand seemed to be very straight and true. Vitaliy was our installer and he did an amazing detailed job. He is very old school in attention to detail, workmanship etc. We had one front stair tread, 2 risers, a nosing, plus a step down into the living room that required 2 nosings and risers underneath. The nosings, stair tread and risers were all custom made and they look amazing the way he installer them. Due to a mis-communication with the custom company the front stair tread was too short and had to be re-made which was no big deal. Vitaliy did an excellent job on the entire floor overall as well as the special areas just mentioned and we are extremely pleased with the quality of his work. Our tile areas were abit higher and he slightly angled the horizontal pieces next to the tile in the kitchen and bathroom, while also creating grooved edges to feed the individual boards into. He told me this is more time consuming so not alot of installers take this step but he takes great pride in his workmanship. It took him 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 days over two visits due to hold ups on some material. We also got flushmount wood floor vents stained to match which I can highly recommend. Vitaliy also used an industrial sander where necessary to sand our floor so it was level. Angelo was very good at answering questions but we often played phone tag. One board has a minor crack which Frontier will fix down the road when stock arrives. I did get another quotation for comparison from another authorized Mirage dealer and apples to apples their price was about 18% higher than Frontier. They are a smaller dealer though so they probably don't get the same volume discount on product, I imagine. The time frame from ordering to installation was about two-three weeks. Overall, our main floor looks completely transformed. We are thrilled with the final results and we would definitely hire Frontier Flooring again and I can highly recommend them!!!
