The work was completed in the agreed upon timeframe, although installers more often than not arrived several hours late or not at all on a given day. The carpet installer did a good job of cutting the carpet to the somewhat irregular perimeter of the rooms and over rough concrete that was not very level in some places (the installation was a “loose lay”, we wanted to easily lift the carpet in the event of basement flooding). The vinyl proposed for the thresholds (into the first room and where the 2 rooms met) was very flimsy and in one case was too short for the width of the doorway. At $125 for these I declined installation. In fairness, Tony the owner did offer to have the installer come back and put in a metal threshold for free, but by then I was tired of waiting for people to show up and thought I was better off leaving well enough alone, I found there was opportunity for misunderstanding when communicating with Tony. Another concern regarding the carpeting was a $95 charge for "Template the size" (separate from the installation charge). When I questioned this charge, Tony tried in a roundabout way to justify it, but ultimately withdrew it and further reduced the overall charge by $25. The young man who installed the tile floor in the bathroom was very well mannered and well intentioned. But this company boasts "expert installation" and I would suggest that he has not yet reached this level of skill. He did not use spacers, so there is some minor misalignment among the tiles. The overall look of the job is diminished in my opinion because both the tiles and the grout are white (giving the floor a painted look, and in places the terra cotta sides of the tiles show above the white grout, creating a problem that could have been avoided with darker grout). I asked for the white tiles but not the white grout, I thought he was going to use a darker colour, and when I questioned the colour during installation he said it would dry darker. Tony suggested darkening the grout using a sealer, but I pointed out the grout used was supposedly self-sealing. He also suggested scraping away the top surface of the grout and topping it up with a darker colour, but again I worried this might make things worse as opposed to better. The most unfortunate aspect of the installation is that the tile is about a half inch too low for the toilet. I asked both Tony and the installer several times if they knew how to level the tile to the toilet fixture, and they assured me they did, but something in their tone told me they were not sure, and my fears were confirmed. I gather from the plumber who re-installed the toilet that you want to err on the side of making the tile a little high as you can easily increase the size of the gasket. But since the tile is so low we have had a hard time shimming it so that it doesn't rock. Had I paid a bargain price for this work I might be more forgiving, but I actually think the price was high.
