Star22home

We were going to update two bathrooms in our house, the master bathroom and the hall bathroom. The hall bath was going to be a complete gut, but the footprint was going to remain the same. The master bathroom was a complete gut, but the footprint was going to be updated, with a curb less linear drain shower. We asked Bernie if this was something he had done and he said it was in their scope. After the rough plumbing inspection, I realized there was standing water on the shower floor. Using a level, the shower floor that was supposed to have a slope for draining was level. When I asked Bernie for the second time if he had ever done this type of shower floor, all I heard was crickets coming from him. The shower floor had to be stripped down to the joists and I brought in a different contractor to build the curb less shower floor with the linear drain. In my opinion, Bernie was not honest with me in his construction abilities. He also wanted me to pay the full price for this option as per the contract. We negotiated a reasonable solution to the cost of this issue, only for Bernie to show up the next day, demanding more money or he was pulling his team off the project.
Then when it came time for the tile contractor to start their work it was determined that a wall that Bernie built separating the shower from the vanity was almost two inches out of plumb at the top of the wall.
I provided Bernie with a list of all the plumbing shower fixtures, so he knew exactly what had to be done in the master shower. He charged additional money as a result of the plumbing fixtures, as he said it was more work for his team to install. I learned about the additional costs after he did the work and handed me an invoice. There were other instances when Bernie performed additional work without my authorization. He never provided a cost estimate for any of the additional work, only the invoice when that work was completed.
When we were negotiating the contract Bernie said if I paid cash then I would get a 3% credit card savings from the contract price. At the end of the contract, I applied my 3% discount to the last payment as a credit. Bernie's story changed and now he was claiming something entirely different and did not want to apply the cash discount.
In my opinion not only does Bernie overstate the abilities of his company, but their work lacks quality and he is not a very honorable person.

His crew is sloppy, cut corners and are careless if you don't watch them. We hired them to do our Bathroom renovation for our first home that we just bought in 2010. This install was in late spring, 2012. Bernie, the owner of the operation who is not a contractor who will sell you the world with his services but not be on site most of the time when his workers are working and in your home and not being supervised. The job was promised to us for 5 days and it took 7 days. They had to come back a couple of times after the 7 days to fix some their errors and left us the rest to fix ourselves after we paid him, even stuff they did is falling apart today. One plus was, he gave us one free recessed light kit for the extra days being there before paying him. The downside is, the light when you turn on takes a sec to actually turn on. He gave us old technology since the new lights don't do that. He never told us before renovation that our basement below will have dust and debris fall below and ruined our $250 dehumidifier that got clogged on the air intake and burned out the pump eventually. The dust filled the whole basement and covered my train layout and personal items throughout. He never told us to take pictures down off the wall in the house that were not in the same room they were working in and ruined several frames and broke the glass on a couple of them. All the workers on site except one didn't speak english to ask questions or concerns. If the workers were experienced, as Bernie said, they would know that and told us to take them down or did it themselves. (Bernie did pay for the fix on the broken glass). When putting in the medicine cabinet, they smashed through my daughter’s room's wall and made big holes ruining her baby alphabet handmade sewn tapestry on the wall. (Ignored and never helped us replace or fix the tapestry) (They did fix her wall though) In the Bathroom, we chose a celery color green for our walls and they didn't check the color swatch before painting the whole thing a greenish gray and then put up the painted white molding. The paint was defective to boot where it was pealing off the walls after it dried. He refused to take the molding down and start over and instead, painted with the defective paint AGAIN on top of old. It was Home Depot's fault on the bad color paint mixing. His workers should have checked the color anyway. They even had the swatch in hand what we picked. We never repainted because we would have to pull the molding off ourselves and do it all over again. Outside when they were paining our bathroom door and molding, they got white paint on our bushes. I had to nit pick on all the debris they missed cleaning up afterwards in my yard and driveway when they were done with the job and leaving it when they left. My bathroom plumbing unfortunately has a 3" long pipe under the floor that has not such great pitch and can clog and I wanted a certain dual flush toilet with a bigger gallon per flush to be ordered from Lowes. He ordered the wrong one when I gave him the proper item number and told him the features. Bernie instead got a single flush toilet and at the lowest GPF. Bernie sat and waited too long to order it and Lowes sold out, so he got a different one and not even tells me or he didn't bother to double check. They already screwed up the paint without checking and now this. I discovered the toilet mistake when it was in a box in my garage before installing and said something. Bernie didn't want to drive around to find one at another Lowes. Bernie brought to my house a cheap bathroom fan with very bad noise ratings and I had to tell them I want something better much more quieter. They installed the new one with poor workmanship because the wiring was not tight in the attic and stopped working 7/13, ignored us when we called and didn't help us. I had discover what was wrong and to fix it myself again. However, they did come back and tweak the fan so it didn't vibrate when turned on a 7/2012 after the install. When they came back to fix the vibrating fan, they scratched our brand new bath tub they installed with the ladder and I had to do the legwork to fix it and get special paint that is rubbing off now. The screws they used in the drywall were not all the way in the wall. We have three spots where there spots popping out. I showed one on the ceiling to Bernie yesterday and he said it is an indent which it wasn't. You hit it with a broom or something he said. He didn't even want to feel the bump. At the time the job was done we had no problems now the ceiling is cracking in the one corner.It looks like they didn't use drywall tape there. The grout they used on the floor was not mixed properly, less than a year and it started to crack and crumble and turned to powder. (I had to fix myself 3x in three years so far). It turns out, they didn't put thinset between the Plywood and the Cement board which helps from the floor moving and prevents tiles from popping and grout breaking apart. Bernie said they put in screws every 9" instead, but that didn't prevent our problem, talk about cutting corners. We didn't have this problem with the old floor tile we had before he came. They installed a new vanity and the night they brought it to my house I took a picture of it with the progress of the bathroom and it fix perfectly in the corner with the counter top on top. The next day, my wife calls me to say the granite counter top will have to be crooked because the corner is not 90 degrees and won't fit. I came home and they covered their tracks by putting up the backsplash so you can't see what they were talking about that it would not fit. After looking at it, measured angles and looking underneath, it looks like they tried to connect the plumbing with the trap and the pipe out of the wall and would not fit by pushing the counter with the sink on top into it. They tried to shift it back, but they could not go any further so the left corner stick out a half an inch. (I have called and emailed him repeatedly to Bernie to come back and fix, he refuses saying that it is not a 90-degree corner and we discussed this before and I said it was ok, meanwhile I was told at work about this and didn't see the problem in hand. I forgot about that picture and saw it months later after the job was done and have raised the issue over and over again. He said in a email to me, I am insulting his workers and him and claims his work is top notch and they don't make these mistakes and they will come back to fix. “Send me a picture” he says to prove him wrong. I put a 90-degree ruler against the corner and sent him pictures and he won't call or email me back after I sent those pictures to prove he was wrong. This is typical bad contractor talk to getting out of fixing something. The counter top we wanted was custom and he was fighting us at first about getting it off center, even though we were paying extra. The granite counter top we got had chips of granite missing on the surface and very hard to see at first because of the color specks, but found out wiping the counter and feeling the roughness after we paid and they left. I called and emailed him and he will not give me an answer if there is a warranty. No warranty it turns out. Instead, sent me a survey to fill out. I emailed him again, why should I fill this out when you never answer me on these issues? The tile work in the shower was done just ok. He put in a recessed box in the wall and the one tile sticks out a little bit and the tiles they custom cut to frame around the box looks like a shark bit into them. No smooth edges. It looks like they need a new blade, or they just used a hand tile cutter to gnaw off the tile bits to make it fit. Our grout around the tiles are crumbling from the bathroom floor. They didn't use enough screws to the backer board I was told by another contractor. Bernie yesterday, 5-26-15 finally came to my home to inspect my issues after seeing my posting online. He address how they put the cabinet in which was fine to fit the corner. They have to adjust it to be sturdy against the wall, which is fine, BUT avoided talking about the crooked countertop on why it was really crooked. I was biting my lip. I measured the angles on how it was set and could have been fixed if they did the proper pipe fitting underneath. This is something I am going to have to live with. He also made a comment on the granite that it looks like moisture got in the granite to make it dark around the sink. I told this to my wife and we both said to each other he never told us to seal the granite and we never had a granite countertop before to know this. He also said, granite has chips and all you see is filler to smooth it out. That does not give him an excuse for giving us such a rough countertop, meanwhile I can get a cabinet from a box at the Big Box store that has a smoother surface like the one I installed downstairs in my basement bathroom. He told me there is nothing he can do to fix the floor from the grout cracking because houses move which is BS and I even showed him the lips on some of tile that was not flat when it was installed. He said installing a floor will never be flat, which is a lie too. A good installer would not cut corners and take their time to make sure it is flat and stable. He said I was not fair saying the things I did and losing thousands of dollars, so I told him I would delete it. After reading this again, it just made me more angry. I edited this to make it fair from my old review. I am going to have to rip out the floor and install the cabinet with a new counter correctly eventually after paying $7000 to this guy. Buyer beware.