Patched ceiling plaster where a fluorescent light was removed Removed old kitchen floor tile and put in new tile
At the beginning of July my wife and I decided to redo our kitchen floor and change out the fluorescent light. After consulting Angie’s list and getting a few quotes we settled on Star City Construction. My wife called the owner and described the job and the timeline. We needed the work completed by Aug. 19th. Hunter assured us that would not be a problem. Hunter asked my wife to text him pictures of the ceiling we wanted to repair and repaint. We could not nail him down on a specific date or price for the job as he was busy with other jobs. The weekend before our deadline, after several texts and calls, Hunter gave us a start date of Wed. the 14th. Plenty of time he said to demo the floor, tile and grout the floor, repair and repaint the ceiling. He gave us a shopping list and we went out and purchased all the supplies. On Tuesday the 13th Hunter asked if he could postpone until the next Monday. I explained that would not work and he had known our timeline all along. 20/20 hindsight I should have rescheduled the work. He told me he would be at my house at 10:00am then he asked what kind of floor we had again. Hunter and his helper Jose’ arrived at 2:00pm on Wed. the 14th. After a brief discussion and inspection of the work required, demo of the floor began. Hunter had to leave after about 45 mins. So I helped Jose’ with the floor demo for the next 5 hours. At Hunter’s request I had purchased backer board to create the sub-flooring for the new tile. Hunter decided that we should use floor leveler instead. Another trip to Lowes and more money out of my pocket. The next day Jose’ arrived at 9:30 but had to wait for hunter, who arrived at 11:00, to do any tile work. He was able to put a coat of joint compound on the damaged area of the kitchen ceiling which ended up looking terrible. Hunter brought a new tile saw and other equipment that Jose’ needed. The blade was bent so they went to Lowes to get a new one. Jose’ returned about 2:00pm and began the tiling process. I spent the next 5 + hours helping mix mortar and cutting tiles for Jose’. Jose’ returned at 9:30am the next day to complete the job. He applied another coat to the ceiling to try and smooth it out and while it looks better than the disaster it was, it still is an obvious patch job. Then the floor was grouted and Jose’ left me with the job of sponging the grout and cleaning the tiles. I helped him clean all his tools and he left at 1:30pm. The ceiling was never painted and my wife and I spent that afternoon and the next day cleaning the tiles again, cleaned the kitchen and then cleaned the living area of all the dust that had settled on the furnishings and floor. Jose’ worked about 18.5 hours. I put in a good 10+ hours of sweat equity with him. My wife and I spent another several hours cleaning up the house and garage from the mess. Then, much to my disappointment , the invoice arrived $75 higher than the original quote. Hunter never was able to inspect the final product which in my opinion is average to below average at best. I should have had them inspect in person and give a written estimate prior to the job. I realize now that there will always be unforeseen issues with any job. I made a mistake or two and learned some very hard lessons.
Service Provider Response
At Star City Construction, LLC we do not claim to be perfect. However, we do stand by our commitment to provide our clients with the highest level of professional workmanship on every project. It is the desire of Star City Construction, LLC that we meet and even exceed our clients expectations. Our goal is to do the project right the first time, but if problems arise to correct them to our clients satisfaction. We are very disappointed that the [member name removed] were not satisfied with the work that we performed. In an effort to resolve the [member name removed]'s dissatisfaction, we made several attempts to reach out to [member name removed]. More than a few times we offered to re-inspect and to correct the problem, but to no avail. In our last phone conversation, again, I offered to come back and [member name removed] stated that "everything was fine". Communication and cooperation are key in all of the projects that we undertake. The client's failure to respond to our repeated requests to let us come back and to re-inspect the job and refusal to let us correct any problems tied our hands and ultimately left him dissatisfied. As with any business, positive word of mouth responses from a satisfied customer is the greatest form of advertising and it is our mission to have all of our clients be able to give positive responses about our work. But, if you are not satisfied, we will make every effort to correct the problem and to prove to you that we value you as a client and that we want you, our client, to be satisfied.
