I do not like giving bad reviews but this guy was so unconcerned about our satisfaction with the…read morejob, and left the floor in such terrible shape, that I want to comment. The reason I am still bothered, although this was months ago now, is that he tried to gaslight both my husband and me and was very forceful with his tone of voice and language trying to convince us of things we could see were not true (neither my husband nor I are overly emotional).
When we showed him the mismatched grout colors (described below) he would say they matched. But clearly they didn't. Then he would say they would dry to match. They didn't. And he repeatedly would argue like this about the very thing we could see in front of us telling us what we saw was not true, mismatched grout. He did this when he could not remove all of the white finish from the grout leaving some white spots in the grey grout, in the places where it was hardest to reach. He tried twice to remove the white from the hard to reach spots, and he said he could not.
I want to say at this point he was very angry and did offer me a refund, and I suggested it felt unfair to not pay him at all (we have a strong sense of what is fair, and money is not our main concern, and they had spent hours, but with his attitude I should have taken the refund!). Instead I asked him to just come back and fix the grout and we'd call it even.
When he came back, without asking me applied black grout colorant over the white spots, this time telling us the black was the same color as the grey grout. Clearly it was not, yet he argued the point that it was. He kept saying "this is the right color". Then he said in a year it might change to grey!!! (By the way, this was new tile that had the wrong finish on it, which is why we called him in... no way was the grout grey because it faded over time, it was always grey).
When I saw this was going to be left mismatched, I asked him to just use the colorant over all the grout, leaving it all one color (I prefer grey but all one color was my priority). He said "We don't do that". Clearly they do! He had just done that to spots of the grout.
Then, gaslighting us again, he again said that it matched (clearly it did not, it was high contrast to the grey grout) and then he said again that it would dry to match. Of course it did not. When he left this time, and he said when it dried it would turn grey, I don't know why I believed him, I think I was just exhausted by all of this. The same line had never been true before, but in the the exchanges with him he became so heated I just wanted him gone. So I thanked him and let him leave. And he left a job done horribly. No one would have been happy with that floor.
I ended up hiring another company to recolor the grout and am very happy with the results. So it cost me twice as much in the end, but the guy I found was so very nice. He actually cared whether or not I was happy with the floor!!!! I clearly wasted my money, energy and time on this very rude man.
NOTE: There is more to this story, when he first did the floor he did not do inside the closet, even though it is the same floor. Then when it looked different inside the closet he tried to tell me they used a different sealer in the closet area. I knew they had not, but he insisted it was their fault not his. He did, however, finally do the floor after spending much time trying to tell me it could not be done.
For the hard to reach areas that were still white, I even offered that if he would tell me what to use I would clean the hard to reach spots myself but he said it's a "trade secret" and wouldn't advice me how to do it myself.
He originally gave us a quote to clean the finish off our tiles, and to replace the grout. When he got there he decided just to clean the grout and not replace. Fine with me. But when he did the job, leaving several white spots where the finish was more stubborn he vehemently tried to tell me it wasn't white. I could see it was. My husband could see it was. Guests who came later could see it was. It made us feel crazy. He came back, begrudgingly and tried again, but still did not get the white off. Finally he used colorant over the white, but it was black, leaving the floor just as messed up as if it were white areas.
I have attached photos of the white and black grout that he left me with, each time considering the job done.
He did a terrible job but worse... he was so rude about it.
