Cosgrove and Sons

Review: We contracted with Cosgrove and Sons to complete an update of our master bath and they completed the work this past March (2013). Since completion we have had them out in June to correct grout coming up between the tile in our shower. Their corrective work did not fix the problem and the grout continues to come up.

We have, since early September, tried to get Cosgrove to come out and honor their contract, which states a one year warranty on their work, but have been unsuccessful. They have been extremely slow to respond and when they have responded it's been with empty promises. They have ignored our phone calls and e-mails for months only to finally respond that they figured out and would fix the problem. They came out last month and took another look at the tile, said they had to order a special epoxy thinset, and said they would be back to fix the grout as soon as the thinset came in. That was a month ago and now we are in yet another round of not retuning calls and e-mails. We can provide all e-mails, photos, and if needed can show phone records of days and times that we have tried to call.Desired Settlement: We believe Cosgrove and Sons should fully remove the defective grout on the shower floor and re-grout the whole shower floor.

Business

Response:

4/1/2014The repairs are done, and there has not been any other issue. The root of the problem was a rare chemical reaction between the tile and a waterproof underlayment.Background: We completed the installation of a new master bathroom for the client. A few months later, the client told us that a few pieces of grout had come up. This was curious since it had never happened before in the hundreds of bathrooms that we have installed. We conferred with the manager of the tile store, [redacted] of [redacted] of [redacted] MD, where our client had purchased the materials. We asked him to come out to the job site to see if he could tell why a few pieces of grout were coming up from the floor. He investigated the work we did, and found that our work was flawless. He did not have any suggestions as to why the grout was coming up. Using our best judgment, we sent a team to the client’s house, and removed the grout from the shower pan, and reinstalled new grout. A few months later, we received a call that the grout was coming out again. This was very perplexing. We contacted experts at the national headquarters of [redacted], also of 2 other tile shops in the area. Someone recommended buying a special epoxy grout. This had to be special ordered, and took over a month to arrive.Meanwhile, we contacted the representative for [redacted], [redacted]. [redacted] is a special waterproof underlayment that was installed under the tile. He told us that on rare occasions, there is a chemical reaction between the backing of the particular mosaic tile that the client had chosen and the [redacted] underlayment. The only solution would be to remove the tile floor, remove the [redacted] underlayment, build a new concrete shower pan, and then re install new tile. This would be a time consuming job that we needed to schedule along with our current jobs. There was no possibility of the water getting under the floor and causing any damage due to the few pieces of missing grout because of the [redacted] underlayment. Once we determined the likely cause of the grout issue, we requested a time to do this corrective process with the client. We needed to coordinate a time when both the client, [redacted], and our team could be at the job site. The initial time that we were available to complete the repair the client was unavailable for several weeks. As soon as all parties, the client, our team and the [redacted] representative were available, we did the repairs. The repairs are done, and there has not been any other issue.