Full Disclosure

What began as gang-buster success in repairs turned into chaos in November.  The floor (wood-look tile) seemed to stall in installation - for weeks it was nothing but excuses.  Leading up to the week of Thanksgiving we had reassurances the next time we got to the house the floor would be done; 100%.   We came on the Monday of  Thanksgiving week and not only was the floor not finished, there were a lot of workers at the house and no Contractor Brian to be found. We ended up staying in Houston for only two days as there was nothing we could do (install blinds, light fixtures, etc.) until the floor was done. It was absolutely heartbreaking - but it only got worse.
Sometime in the week following Thanksgiving the tile install was finished and grouted.  Unfortunately, the grout was left on the tile for three days.  Grouting a floor is laying tile 101 - wipe grout on and 15ish minutes later wipe grout off.  Leaving the grout on for three days caused damage to the floor that we are still dealing with.   The short version is that Contractor Brian was able to get the grout off of the floor.  At that point in time he disclosed that he had subcontracted the floor but was back on the job himself to make everything right - we thought the worst was behind us. 
The second week of December we indeed had a finished floor, but finished didn't mean right.  It was the first time was had seen the house empty of workers, and tools, and supplies - there were areas of the floor that were completely uneven.  The first area I noticed was in the living room and Contractor Brian assured us that the floor would be fixed - that was December 11th,  the day I wrote the previous entry on the blog.  When I came back to  the house a few days later I found about 250 sq feet of floor had been removed to be fixed - there were piles of broken tiles everywhere.  To add insult to injury a small portion of tile had been re-laid and it looked just as bad as before.  That's right, the floor had been installed wrong, removed, installed wrong again. Contractor Brian had been a life line and great worker in the beginning, but by this end he had scammed us of time and money. 

Even now it feels like such a betrayal.  You hear stories of people being taken advantage of and wonder how it happens - this is how it happened to us. I have had many a theory as to went wrong, and while I don't want to speculate, I will tell you how it ends.  I went to the house on Thursday December 21st unannounced.  No-one working.  It was for the best as I had several folks coming in to bid on fixing the floor / finish the tile in the shower and kitchen back-splash.  I called Brian that Thursday at 11 am to tell him we were letting him go - he was asleep and his wife had to wake him to take my call. 


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