floor sanding quotes

frenchbird1

We have 70 m2 of wooden floor we want sanded and varnished. The house is empty, the floor boards in quite good condition. We also want the stairs done. It needs to be done within the month. We so far have 4 quotes.
quote 1: local pine furniture shop, will have to hire some of the equipment. £1600 +VAT but won't do the stairs as too much hassle. Can start next week.
quote 2: £1400+£450 for stair+VAT. Sounded reliable but went on holiday and did not give us quote in writing as he said he would. Can't start for 2 weeks as on holiday.
quote 3: £900+£400 for stairs, no VAT (!), could start straight away. Sounded ok, 10 good ratings/one bad on the website that referred us to them (others have one or no rating).
quote 4: £1500, no mention of VAT on quote, will quote the stairs separately. Dates are within what we asked for.

Obviously we are tempted by the cheapest one though the VAT thing sounds a bit dodgy. What would you do?

Russe11

Sanding stairs is very time consuming, floor sanding can be a diy job, but does require a bit of getting used to the industrial equipment to begin with.

Wooden floor? is that pine, oak will make a difference to the time it takes and material(amount of "sandpaper")

Are the doing it once with one girt of paper or are they doing it working through a few grades?, what finish are they using? how many coats are they applying? Are the making good any loose boards first?

Just some of the questions to perhaps ask, thats assuming they will tackle the job in different ways.

The no VAT quote could well be a soletrader with no employees keeping within the VAT threshold. I would expect them to either be only working maybe half the year or supplying labour sevices only and leaving the hiring and materials to yourselves.

The only way you can tell if any of them quote are any good in my opinion is to see work the contractors have done, only that way can you see if its to the standard you desire, people often say word of mouth but I am still wary of such because different customer have different standards, making the opinion of a good job very different in many cases.