Our flooring installer called to say Mr. Norman and his helper left several large piles of old hardware and rubbish on the floor, stalling the flooring install. Also, he complained they had been using his tools and shopvac without his permission. They also used our ladders and hand tools without our permission.
They did not work everyday nor keep normal work hours. On most days Mr. Norman did not appear.
Each day we would find problems. Mr. Norman said we were overly critical. We hired an independent inspector to review the work. The inspector said the work, construction and plumbing, was shoddy, the materials poor, and many shortcuts were being taken. He didn?t think any of the work would pass even a cursory home inspection.
The tiling guy who showed up had never worked with Mr. Norman before. Mr. Norman had promised him that the areas would be ?tile-ready? upon his arrival, but he said it was the worst drywall work he had ever seen and that he would not tile over it.
We told Mr. Norman that we wanted to end our contract with him. Mr. Norman asked if we would be leaving a negative review on Angie?s List. When I said that I had not thought about that yet, Mr. Norman offered us a refund of $2500 to ensure we were happy and would not leave him a negative review. Mr. Norman asked for 60 days to produce the refund. We agreed and hired another plumbing firm and tiling firm to take over. The new plumbing contractor wrote:
?I felt it very important that I tell you what poor workmanship we found when we took over from your first plumber. The first problem we encountered was that he had closed up walls with open crimp fittings on the pipes he had installed. That told me he never tested his work. If we hadn?t torn out the durock he had installed and tested the pipes, you would have had major flooding in your walls the first time you ran your shower, destroying your new walls, paint, base boards, and flooring.
After finding that, I started to check on everything he did and I found a number of other problems with his workmanship, including:
1. loose shower head fittings in the master shower (high potential for future leaks behind the walls)
2. building materials issues (they used damaged durock and had used a combination of drywall screws, rusty nails, and other inappropriate hardware to secure the durock). The durock itself was installed so poorly that you most certainly would have had moisture getting through and causing mildew and eventual disintegration of walls
3. several instances of unsecured piping
4. piping had been run without installation of stud guards, leaving your piping vulnerable to puncture or cutting
We had to remove all the durock your first plumber installed and redo a lot of piping. I estimate that the portion of your invoice which covers the cost of repairing what your first plumber did is $2300.?
We never received the promised refund from Mr. Norman.
Cons: Horrible work, horrible experience.
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