Custom Works Remodeling

In April, we made the unfortunate mistake of hiring CustomWorks KC to remodel our master shower. After paying them nearly $10,000, we made the decision to fire them for a multitude of reasons (See details below). Our decision was validated by a tile professional with 30 years of experience who took one look at the shower, apologized profusely, and determined it needed to be completely torn out and rebuilt. We hope this review prevents others from falling victim to CustomWorks’ ineptitude and unprofessionalism.

Reasons to not hire CustomWorks KC:
• Horrible shower base construction (See Images)
o They installed the shower drain crooked. When asked to correct it, they “straightened” the drain but did not fix the tile work around it. Instead, they attempted to use grout to cover up their cutting mistakes
o Instead of taking the time to tile all the way to the edge of the shower base, they lazily filled the spaces where tile should go with grout
o They installed the base tile completely uneven to the point where you could feel the highs and lows with your shoes on. This would have undoubtedly resulted in water pooling
• Unacceptable wall tile installation (See Images)
o They tiled on top of walls that were not straight
o They did not follow standard tiling practices of mortaring the wall and back buttering the tile pieces. Instead, they carelessly slopped on mortar to the back of the tiles which resulted in 30% mortar coverage on wall tiles when the standard for wet areas is a minimum of 95%
• Ineffective waterproofing
o After consulting with a tile professional, it was determined that there were multiple points of failure in the water proofing. All of these would have been caught had CustomWorks taken the time to perform a flood test prior to beginning their tile work.
• Unethical business practices
o After requesting a more skilled crew, CustomWorks attempted to re-bid the wall tile claiming the initial bid included the cost of tiling but not the cost of grouting. We were given the option to pay additional for grouting or to grout the walls ourselves. This was surprising considering the cost of tiling and grouting the base was all one line-item.
o CustomWorks utilized the money provided to them for materials to purchase tools that I would expect a contractor to have on hand i.e. trowels, grout floats, etc. They also purchased simple materials in mass quantities such as multiple shower drains, 16 sanding sponges, etc.
o After all this, the owner of the company said we owed $187 for materials. He offered to waive this cost provided we did not post a malicious review - leading us to question the lack of negative reviews for this company