Joe's Home Repair & Improvement

We have been waiting for years to change our kitchen floor, because we prefer to wait to be able to get exactly what I want (pricey and heated large porcelain tiles). When we were ready, 2 friends recommended J[redacted] saying he was really good and reliable. So we hired him to remove the old cork floor, lay the heating mash, place the porcelain tiles over it, and install insulation under the kitchen. The space is an addition and the crawling space, if not insulated, would make the tiles very cold in the winter. We also hired him to install just tiles (no insulation or heating mash) in a small bathroom and the room that gives entrance to our basement (6’ x 6’ maybe).
All started well. His cutting is impeccable and he is reliable. However, we were not satisfied with the final result. The tiles were not leveled, one tile is always higher/lower than the next, with hardly two consecutive tiles with a smooth transition. Normal cleaning tools don't reach the corners caused by the different levels. Not what you expect when you buy shiny and smooth large tiles! At first, I did not complain because we knew that fixing that would require breaking the entire floor and redoing everything, wasting all the expensive material we bought, and J** would not agree. This was May 2014. With time, more problems started to appear. Right at the entrance of the kitchen there were moving boards, badly placed probably 30 years ago, when the kitchen was added to the house. During construction, J** himself pointed that out, and fixed it before placing the tile, always making sure to emphasize how his job was going to last forever. Well, the boards started to move a couple of months later, and the grout started to crumble away. With summer, the ants came, through gaps between the floor and the baseboard (tile baseboards also installed by J[redacted]. The house is old, we know that things happen over time, but we never had ants in the house before, it was sealed well from the outside when we had the old floors. Then winter came. The heating mash under the tiles works well. Insulation probably helped too. However, somewhere below the counters there is probably a gap, not isolated from the outside, where the cold air is able to pass through the insulation and into the kitchen.
Now it is March, it’s been 9 full months since his job was completed. More grout is crumbling away. After experiencing that floor in every season we asked another professional tile installer to provide an unbiased opinion on the project. He stated: “The way the tile was placed is unacceptable.” So decided to contact Joe. We wanted to be compensated for at least what we paid him to install the tiles, as fixing is not possible without redoing it, even though our loss goes well beyond that because of the pricy materials. Or we wanted him to provide an effective and professional solution. We asked him to come over, we wanted to show him in person how the tile has seemed to get worse in less than a year. He said as he arrived that his warranty was only for six months, information we never received before, as we have no contract or receipt, but he always claimed his job was going to “last forever, unlike what the previous contractor’s job” (from 30 years before!). He said that it is an old house, that the structure was bad, and that the tile could not be flat and even because of the heating mash underneath. He could not justify why the tiles are also not leveled in the small bathroom and the room leading to the basement, since there is no heating mash there. He kept blaming the old house. We know it is old, but that is why it needed construction, to be improved. At the time of construction, he pointed out the problems and told us how he was fixing them. Now, he blames them for the imperfections in his work. He just walked away after that. He made no attempt at trying to find a solution.
So far we hope to have been fair and objective in this review, relating only facts about Joe’s work and our experience with him. If we were to add our opinion about J**, we’d say he is a nice and reliable person, he works hard, his construction was in time (rare among contractors). We don’t dislike him. We are just not happy with the fact that we will have to replace the kitchen floor again in the future, spending all that money and going through construction again, bearing all the loss of money and time. This was a step towards improving our home that should have been finished last year. We would most likely have used Joe for other future jobs, however this will not be the case because of this unprofessional side of him we have experienced.

We have been waiting for years to change our kitchen floor, because we prefer to wait to be able to get exactly what I want (pricey and heated large porcelain tiles). When we were ready, 2 friends recommended J[redacted] saying he was really good and reliable. So we hired him to remove the old cork floor, lay the heating mash, place the porcelain tiles over it, and install insulation under the kitchen. The space is an addition and the crawling space, if not insulated, would make the tiles very cold in the winter. We also hired him to install just tiles (no insulation or heating mash) in a small bathroom and the room that gives entrance to our basement (6’ x 6’ maybe).
All started well. His cutting is impeccable and he is reliable. However, we were not satisfied with the final result. The tiles were not leveled, one tile is always higher/lower than the next, with hardly two consecutive tiles with a smooth transition. Normal cleaning tools don't reach the corners caused by the different levels. Not what you expect when you buy shiny and smooth large tiles! At first, I did not complain because we knew that fixing that would require breaking the entire floor and redoing everything, wasting all the expensive material we bought, and J** would not agree. This was May 2014. With time, more problems started to appear. Right at the entrance of the kitchen there were moving boards, badly placed probably 30 years ago, when the kitchen was added to the house. During construction, J** himself pointed that out, and fixed it before placing the tile, always making sure to emphasize how his job was going to last forever. Well, the boards started to move a couple of months later, and the grout started to crumble away. With summer, the ants came, through gaps between the floor and the baseboard (tile baseboards also installed by J[redacted]. The house is old, we know that things happen over time, but we never had ants in the house before, it was sealed well from the outside when we had the old floors. Then winter came. The heating mash under the tiles works well. Insulation probably helped too. However, somewhere below the counters there is probably a gap, not isolated from the outside, where the cold air is able to pass through the insulation and into the kitchen.
Now it is March, it’s been 9 full months since his job was completed. More grout is crumbling away. After experiencing that floor in every season we asked another professional tile installer to provide an unbiased opinion on the project. He stated: “The way the tile was placed is unacceptable.” So decided to contact Joe. We wanted to be compensated for at least what we paid him to install the tiles, as fixing is not possible without redoing it, even though our loss goes well beyond that because of the pricy materials. Or we wanted him to provide an effective and professional solution. We asked him to come over, we wanted to show him in person how the tile has seemed to get worse in less than a year. He said as he arrived that his warranty was only for six months, information we never received before, as we have no contract or receipt, but he always claimed his job was going to “last forever, unlike what the previous contractor’s job” (from 30 years before!). He said that it is an old house, that the structure was bad, and that the tile could not be flat and even because of the heating mash underneath. He could not justify why the tiles are also not leveled in the small bathroom and the room leading to the basement, since there is no heating mash there. He kept blaming the old house. We know it is old, but that is why it needed construction, to be improved. At the time of construction, he pointed out the problems and told us how he was fixing them. Now, he blames them for the imperfections in his work. He just walked away after that. He made no attempt at trying to find a solution.
So far we hope to have been fair and objective in this review, relating only facts about Joe’s work and our experience with him. If we were to add our opinion about J**, we’d say he is a nice and reliable person, he works hard, his construction was in time (rare among contractors). We don’t dislike him. We are just not happy with the fact that we will have to replace the kitchen floor again in the future, spending all that money and going through construction again, bearing all the loss of money and time. This was a step towards improving our home that should have been finished last year. We would most likely have used Joe for other future jobs, however this will not be the case because of this unprofessional side of him we have experienced.