The Unfinished Work

I don't like to write posts like this. I don't like to be critical of companies or their workers. I do expect, though, for people to work and do their job when I am paying for products and labor.

I don't expect them to show up at 11 a.m. and then work for an hour and take a 2-hour lunch. I expect at least a 6-hour work day out of them. I realize putting down tile is not easy but if you only work 3 hours a day, it sure takes a long time.

To remind you, we had an incident with the dishwasher which resulted in the loss of my 30-year-old parquet flooring. We choose to replace it with tile.

We chose our flooring company, a place in Roanoke that I politely will not name - yet. While we were at it, we decided to replace the carpeting in the living room, hallway, and bedroom with hardwood flooring, something we had intended to do in the next five years anyway. So I chose the tile to go with the hardwood flooring. So this was not a little job. It was a half-house renovation.

The tile was installed in mid-October. On its face it looks ok, but it is not the best tile job I've ever seen. The more I walk on it, the more I find uneven places. Plus, the job is not finished.

The salesperson had cut the job into two parts: one for the tile, one for the hardwood. We had terrible issues with the tile and the installer was not welcome to return. Now we've issues with the hardwood - we wanted a simple change of direction in one room for the wood and some way to make that change in an open area without a transition strip (because that was something else to trip over), and for some reason this was a big problem -  and yesterday we cancelled that job out of sheer frustration. However, we are now left with an unfinished mess.




There is no quarter round along the baseboard, so you can see how badly that looks.



The carpet is not tacked down where it meets the tile. It's actually simply laying over top of the tile.

 

This is how it is sitting on the tile. I consider it a real trip hazard.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but this particular tile is raised
up enough at this end that you can stub your toe on it. If it were under the
table it would be one thing, but it's right in the main walk area.

I am greatly distressed by this and don't quite know where to go from here. I did not hear from the company today. I think if I knew I had a customer as upset as we are, I'd be calling and bending over backwards to try to fix the problems, but apparently we're not "big" enough players to warrant attention.

Looks like it might be time to drag out my poison pen and send off a letter to the company's manager and president.