As contractors go, this is one of the better ones we've used. The finished work looks great, but there were a few bumps in the road getting there. I'd still recommend these guys, but perhaps going into some of the issues will help you avoid the same mistakes.
The job: These guys put about 800 sq ft of slate in the first floor of our town home a couple of years ago. They also put in a stained glass backsplash in the kitchen, and recently returned for some touch up work on that part.
First, Pat is not the easiest guy to get in touch with. He doesn't seem to return voicemails and doesn't work via email. But once you can reach him and schedule something, he shows up, pretty much on time. Not our experience with other contractors.
His estimate for how long the job would take, the materials needed, and the cost were pretty accurate. His rates were definitely reasonable compared to others we'd considered.
The first hiccup - Pat had another job he wanted to squeeze in, and had the guys stay late to finish ours sooner. Unfortunately, they rushed it and left a very noticeable haze of grout residue over pretty much all the tiles. If you've ever done a tiling job yourself, this is the most time consuming part of it - rinsing over and over to remove the excess. Pat had not inspected the job when it was finished, so we had to try and reach him to come out and take a look. To his credit, he didn't argue at all (though he hardly could, the way it looked) and it was fixed the next day. Because it was dry, they had to use some pretty harsh chemicals which is not really recommended for the longevity of the floor, but hey, these are rocks, right?
Now to the backsplash. It's is STUNNING. Pat did a great job layout out the tile so it looks great even where there aren't natural borders like cabinets or windows. They paid a lot of attention to detail, making 'trim' pieces to finish off free edges.
It wasn't until about 18 months later when we decided to replace the stock under-the-cabinet lighting that we realized they had actually tiled around the light fixtures instead of removing them and tiling behind them. It wasn't necessarily their mistake, but I would have expected them to at least ask us what we'd like them to do with these fixtures.
So in order to replace these crappy fluorescents with the snappy LEDs that sit at the front edge of the cabinets, we needed to tile these two small areas behind the fixtures. Not wanting to ruin such a beautiful job with our own hacks, we of course called Pat. .After weeks of trying to get in touch with him, we finally connected and he sent someone out the same week. We had the left over tile, and bought the grout ourselves, but he still charged the minimum $300 fee for the 2 or so hours of labor involved. A pretty costly mistake that could have been easily avoided with just a phone call.
In the end, the tile looks great, and these guys certainly know what their doing. I guess that is why they are probably busier than most, which explains why Pat is hard to reach, and why sometimes a job would get rushed and a few mistakes would be made. If we had to do it again, I'd still hire Bowers, but I'd be sure to ask for the owner to make the final inspection of the job, and talk through all the installation details (fixture removal and replacement, outlets, etc.) thoroughly. read more