Footprints Floors

This was an extraordinarily difficult experience. At the front end, we were promised a simple four-day shower renovation; it turned into a months-long ordeal. Literally every element of our shower was done incorrectly the first time around, and many of the construction flaws were so serious that we were unable to get them resolved. The problems we encountered included: 1.) Mosaic tile on the shower’s back wall had to be mounted three separate times because the workers were unable to construct the design. 2.) Floor had sharp edges and uneven joints between tiles. Floor had to be laid twice before they scolded us for selecting the wrong kind of tile. 3.) Side walls were not leveled properly. As a result, our door will not sit flush and slides around on its own. 4.) Walls were too thick for our fixtures and needed to be retrofitted. 5.) The curb did not have a slope, meaning that water sits on the top of the step rather than running back into the shower. This resulted in us having to install the door backwards, losing six inches off of our floor area. 6.) First attempt at side walls had big visible cliffs in the joints. 7.) The shampoo niche had jagged cuts on the tile. They couldn’t construct an all-tile niche and had to switch to metal edging. 8.) They installed chipped tiles in the shower. We have been using black markers to cover the blemishes. In each case, the shoddy workmanship described above was presented to us as a “finished product.” Footprints management did not take responsibility for basic quality control. Instead, we had to have frequent, awkward conversations with the workers and management to point out obvious construction flaws. At one point in the process, I asked Cory (the owner) if he would put work like this in his own home. He answered “no”. One wonders why such work was presented to us as a job well done only an hour earlier. Apart from the problems with workmanship, the workers were not respectful of our home. They did not clean up after themselves. They left a wet shower curtain on our bed, a wet metal stool on the wooden floor, and chunky gray epoxy on the floor, which needed to be scraped off with a putty knife. We found cigarette butts and sharp tile shards in our driveway. The hose was often left running. The garage door and bathroom and bedroom windows were left open, allowing cool air from the a/c to pour out of the house after they left the worksite. The final straw came after we had paid for the work. As I noted above, we attempted to put on the shower door and, due to the problems with the construction, our installer was unable to install it properly. I reached out to Cory to ask for him to address the outstanding issues with the shower so that we could install a door properly. After consulting with our installer, he came to the conclusion that there was nothing that could be done to fix our shower. We were offered a 10% discount. This seemed underwhelming, but we were so exhausted that we resolved to take the discount and cut our losses.