Tile job not finished

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calliexw

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Apr 13, 2014
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12
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Ok, I feel really stupid; "you get what you pay" for really holds true here:
I had tile installed in a very small kitchen/dining area that transitions into the living room of a tiny condo. The whole area was about 120 square feet. The transition between the tile and the living room is nine feet long. A friend of a friend did it, the friend is a general contractor and he supervised, took the measurements and gave me the price, while his "tile guy" laid the actual tile. They both sounded super confident and like they knew what they were doing, of course their day job is at a car lot, so I guess I should have known...

Anyway to try and keep it short, some alarm bells went off when I realized, after they first starting laying the tile, that they didn't remove my quarter round or even ask me if I wanted to remove it. Then the main guy told me that it was ok because they could just grout the edges of the room... That didn't sound right either...
They did half the room the first night from 6-12pm and came back the next morning and laid the other half. At this point I had already googled the wall grout joint issue and told them that I didn't want grout in those joints, I wanted caulk instead. Little did I know he had no clue what I was referring to(sanded tile caulk.)
The other guy laid the rest of the main pieces that didn't need to be cut and when he was done I realized that the way he done all the tile made it so that the nine foot transition into the living room was going to look REALLY awkward.. He had run a row of full tile along the entryway wall (the main guy said he had to do it that way because the walls were crooked)... So that meant that right in where I wanted the tile to end in the middle of my tiny house I was going to have a nine foot strip of two inches of cut tile followed by a 1.75" transition strip; that seemed like it would look awful!! Later I realized that the reason they did it that way was because they didn't want to use/didn't have a real tile saw and had planned all along to just use one of those $20 tile scoring cutters for the whole job, and then grout the wall joints even though I specifically told them I did not want that done. I had planned on going and picking up the grouted caulk for them, but come time to grout he basically told me that the main guy had told him to still grout it and that I could come back later with caulk if I wanted white trim..... :( hday number tw


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Sorry my phone started acting weird so I had to finish my stupid story as a reply to myself:

So I once again told him to absolutely not put regular grout against my walls.. And he said "ok then you can just do the caulk later when the grout drys." I was sort of taken aback that he was willing to let me finish the job so I just kind of shrugged.

Now I'm left with weird gaps along my walls and one at my threshold that is 3/4 of an inch wide and I don't know exactly what to do. Also he didn't use any tape and got grout and mortar all over my baseboards and the finishing pieces under the cabinets in the kitchen. He told me they would come back in a week to check and see if everything was ok. Wth? Also he forgot his drill to mix the grout the last day and I'm pretty sure that the $20 dollar bottle of stain stuff he put in didn't get mixed through because the grout between the tile looks chalky and porous, but the left over stuff in the bucket looks shiny and water proofish...

So aside from venting; and thank you if you made it through this wall of text: any suggestions on what I should do? Should I say anything when they call to check? Am I an idiot for even thinking they will? By the way the main guy is my boyfriends friend, and I don't want to make things awkward between them, BF says I'm being picky, of course he didn't just shell out over $550 so I don't know what to think. Did I pay enough to even complain, and what can they do? I'm thinking of asking them to re stain proof the floor and lay nine and a half more tiles at that awkward middle of the room junction, apply the grouted caulk to the wall joints (that I already bought), clean up the baseboards, and install a transition piece at that huge gap left by the backdoor. Are these reasonable requests? Or should I chalk it up to some guys thinking they were doing me a favor, let it go and attempt to do that stuff myself?


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Yes I paid them. What kind of unseen problems could there be?


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Luckily the subfloor is cement so I'm not too worried about issues with that :). I really can't rip it out right now unfortunately, probably won't for a few years be able to for a few years. Here are some pics: ImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404408859.826091.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404408922.283568.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404408942.330247.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404408988.032397.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404409019.033856.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404409048.682815.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404409070.753678.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404409111.798298.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404409142.173473.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404409156.186653.jpgImageUploadedByFlooring Forum1404409175.054688.jpg


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Also I almost did rip it out before he'd cut any tile or grouted, but I didn't want to seem like I was throwing a fit. Plus as bad as it looks it was really nice to have a real floor instead of just cement for the first time in six months... It took them a week and a half to come back and finish, the whole time I was telling myself "I can live with it, when they finish it will look fine." :/ I definitely wish I had now, before I'd paid them.. But that just seemed like it would be rude of me. This is my first time owning property and boy is the learning curve steep!


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Thats a total hack job. Call your attorney general or licensing board, maybe a lawyer. I bet they have no real license, and if they said they did, here in AZ thats a felony.
 
I'm a DIY'r and if I bought a house with tilework like that - it would be very high on the list to tear out and redo correctly.
 
Thx, for your input everybody! Still trying to figure out what I'm gonna do.


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