A Polish craftsman, a Phoenix showroom, and one material.

How Rafal got here

Rafal Nalej was born and raised in Poland and came to the United States as a young student, studying at the Ort Technical Institute in Chicago. He had almost no money, so he worked his way through school at a small local flooring store. That's where the whole thing started — not as a business plan, but because he found the work genuinely interesting.

In 2004 he moved to the Valley of the Sun and kept learning the trade from both ends: retail, where you find out what customers actually want, and wholesale, where you find out how the product is really made and what the differences between manufacturers mean. Eight years of that.

In 2012 he opened Olympic Hardwood Flooring — a small boutique flooring business, taking projects of any size and budget. It's stayed family-owned since.

Rafal is a rare breed in this business and I cannot recommend him or his team any higher. Steve O.

Why only hardwood

Most flooring companies in Phoenix sell everything: tile, carpet, laminate, vinyl, wood. It's a reasonable way to run a business, and it means nobody in the building is an expert in any of it.

We went the other way. Hardwood is the only material we sell, install, sand, refinish and repair — which means when you ask why one engineered board costs twice what another one does, or whether your existing floor can take another sanding, or what happens to a wide plank floor on a slab that wasn't prepped properly, you get an answer from someone who has done it several hundred times.

It also means we'll tell you when hardwood isn't the right call. There are rooms where it isn't, and we'd rather say so than sell you a floor that fails.

The way we work

Our clients are as different from each other as their houses are, so the process starts with listening rather than showing.

1. The phone call

What type of floor, species, colour, texture and finish you're drawn to. Which rooms it's going in. When you'd ideally like it started and finished. And if you can, photos by email of those rooms and the furniture in them — so that the samples we bring are chosen against your actual house rather than at random.

2. The in-home appointment

Accurate field measurements, and a visual inspection that finds the things that decide the real price: whether the slab or substrate needs preparation before it can accept wood, how the baseboards should be handled, and how the floor should meet the carpet, tile or stone next to it. We arrive with hand-picked samples that fit the brief.

3. As much time as you need

We don't sell what's overstocked or on promotion. We sell the floor that matches your home and how you live in it. Clients regularly write that they were never pressured, that questions got answered late in the evening, and that nobody followed them around the showroom. That's deliberate.

The people you'll actually deal with

Clients name them in reviews, which tells you something. Kelly and Michaela in the showroom, patient with people who need three visits to decide. Install crews led by Eric, with Leo, Chris and Buddha named repeatedly for work described as "impeccable, flawless and detailed." And Rafal, who tends to show up daily while a job is running and does the final walk-through himself.

Where we've been seen

Over the years Olympic Hardwood has been profiled on CW6's HomeHQ programme several times — on choosing the right floor product, on the installation process, and on a tour of the showroom — and featured in Life In The Biltmore magazine.

Giving back

Because of how the company started, Olympic Hardwood has always put a percentage of profits into local causes — Phoenix Children's Hospital among them, and Polish-American community and heritage work. It's not a marketing programme; it's a habit that predates the showroom.

Credentials

• Family-owned since 2012, operating in the Valley since 2004
• 4.9 average rating on Google across two decades of clients
• BBB A+ rating, accredited since 2017
• Best of Houzz for Service, four times
• 1,000+ samples in the Phoenix showroom, walk-ins welcome