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"Bathroom Remodel – Disappointed I am very disappointed with the performance of Green Bay Remodeling (GB) on my bathroom remodel. Fundamentally the problems were: poor workmanship, blatant errors, lack of attention to detail by work supervisors and project management, and an inability to recognize problems and/or report them to me in a timely manner. Some examples are described below. This impacted schedule, cost (for GB, not me), the end product, and my overall mental health. There was a continuing pattern of doing poor quality work, assuming it was okay, and then fixing it when I complained. Mistakes (tile, grout, grab bar, temperature limit stop damage, cleanliness, etc.) were never admitted, and apparently it was hoped I did not notice them. This reduced my confidence in GB as the job progressed. The estimate to complete was 3-4 weeks but ended up 11 weeks. A major issue on this project was that I had a poor work crew that was replaced after 5 ½ weeks. But there are, in my opinion, as you will see, other underlying issues that compounded problems and created problems of their own. Based on my experience, the problem Is not just one worker, or a single crew, or a single manager, but more systemic in nature. Green Bay: I like their business model. You sign a contract and they commit to price before they see the complete design. I purchased and designed almost everything independently and GB installed it. They do have a large showroom from which you can purchase. They were no price-related issues throughout the contract. No hassle, no back and forth, etc. Plus you get a 1-year labor warranty for returning the completion survey! After receiving the initial contract to sign I nearly quit and went elsewhere. This was because the contract was a nine-page “pilot” which was poorly written, with many typos, really not an enforceable document. It even had language that contradicted our initial discussions, in my favor. Scary. I spoke with one of their current clients and requested the same format, 2-page contract, and I was satisfied with it. Some of the reasons for the delays were: - Workers did not show up for entire days or only worked a couple hours a day - Did not pass two city inspections, had to redo and await a total of two days for the inspectors to revisit - Two holiday weekends - The crew was changed after 5 ½ weeks, long after the problems starting occurring. - It took 3 days for a new crew to come on board. It was then I learned I learned of critical issues with the first crew’s work. The workers apparently made mistakes early on, 3 weeks into the project, and the project manager (PM) either did not recognize them or did not identify them to me until after the new crew came on board some 3 weeks later. The mistakes were with the shower floor and surrounding tile. I did have questions about peaks and valleys in the floor, but these were dismissed. The concrete shower pan and tile had to be removed and redone, ordering extra tiles at a premium with express delivery. - Damage to the temperature limit stop of the shower mixing valve during an unsuccessful attempt to diagnose a problem created by the installers. I needed to order a new part which took nearly a week to arrive. At times, PM seemed inexperienced, over-confident, and not very knowledgeable about construction practices. I attribute some problems to being accustomed to doing things a particular way, but also to a lack of construction knowledge/experience. Your only interface is with the PM so it is important for them to be knowledgeable about the construction details of the project. Recessed lighting is provided free by the contractor and I was told not to worry even though I complained that the selected lights were not appropriate. My bathroom is open to the bedroom. It has an 11 ft+ sloped ceiling. The proposed lights were wide angle (they would illuminate the high ceiling and not the room below) and also they did not gimbal, so because of the sloped ceiling they ended up pointing to the bedroom not the bathroom below. I identified gimballed, narrow-beam lights, that were indeed news to the PM, that were more appropriate, and we used these. The first crew ran out of tile, even though I ordered 6% more than the 10% overage that was initially requested, and they had to use scraps for what they thought was finishing up the wall tile work. I complained about how the shower tile was chipped around the shampoo niche and the window and was told that was the best they could do. Maybe it’s the best anyone can do, but it does look sloppy. Ultimately, I identified some wall pencils to cover the chipped areas around just the window, which they installed and it looked ok in the end. I requested that my grab bar be positioned 34 inches above the finished floor. The posted design drawings and associated text on the submission to the City reflected this. But after all the tile was installed I find out from the construction progress photos that the stud that was installed behind the shower wall tile was installed too low to meet this requirement. Granted, only an inch but I am old and tall and it makes a difference. Too bad, this was such a simple thing and there was plenty of time to correct it before the wall tile was installed. Another detail missed. I specified the best possible one-coat paint and Green Bay paid for it. The initial paint job was so poor (bare areas, light painted over) that I requested a second coat, for which I purchased the paint for both trim and walls. Vinyl plank flooring is generally laid in a random staggered pattern. This is recommended by the manufacturer and included in the installation instructions. When questioned the PM seemed to have no understanding of this. This is just something of which you should be aware if GB installs floors for you. There were problems with the shower mixing valve. Plumbing personnel spent 6 hours trying to diagnose and fix the problem without success. It was reassembled in an odd manner, not looking like the manufacturer’s website. I was told that they would come by the next day to open up the wall behind the valve to check it out. No one looked at the installation instructions and no one called the manufacturer. But I did. The manufacturer told me it was likely only a cartridge issue and gave me things for them to check. A different plumber came in the next day and sure enough got it working halfway decent in an hour, basically using the manufacturer’s guidance. He told me, and showed me, that the temperature limit stop had been damaged at some point during the installations. I ordered a new part to replace the one they damaged. More plumbing poor workmanship. Of the two faucets installed, there was one leaking drain and one leaking trap. They do a poor job with grout. I could not get the color grout I wanted because I was asked the day before it was needed and it was not available. In the end, color choice actually did not matter because the finished, sealed, grout was, tile-to-tile, a variety of colors, a variety of textures, and maybe 10% of it close to resembling my chosen color. Again, disappointing, considering that my 1989 house has 100 feet of gray tile grout that is all the same color. Ask for color seal for your grout to assure consistency of color. They used color seal of my requested grout color and it turned out fine. They did a very poor job of maintaining cleanliness: My bathroom has bottom and top openings opposite the bedroom where I slept for the project duration. The bottom was covered and zippered but not the top during the demolition and dry wall work. Dust was everywhere. When I complained, the PM pointed to the top open area and said that’s where the dust came from. No further attempt was made to cover this area for several days. I became so disappointed that got a plastic tarp and covered it myself. Even after this, every night, after the days on which they worked, my routine was to sweep out and vacuum the bedroom. In my yard, I complained multiple times about the same cleanliness issues but the same things kept happening. It was like repeatedly having to ask your child to make their bed"