TILE IT ALL

Prior to the tile work, we had hired Jeff as a handyman to help us install some wood flooring. It isn't his specialty, but he needed work and we needed help. We paid him $18/hour for the hours he worked on a daily basis. He was enthusiastic, hard-working, fast, pleasant to work with, and did a pretty good job and gave us our money's worth. So he earned our confidence. When it came time to do the tile (his specialty) he gave us a flat-rate bid for $340 for the countertops plus $175 for the back-splash. This was just for the labor, since we already had the materials. At this point he asked if we could pay him in advance. (He needed rent money for the apartment he was moving into.) Since we had confidence in him from his good performance with the flooring and we came to like him, we trusted him enough to accommodate him. He got started on the tile, doing several hours work, cutting and gluing some pieces on the counter top. Then he got a call to do a quick job at another site for a couple of hours. He promised to be back that afternoon. Later he called and promised to be back the next morning. He didn't show. During the following week we've had a couple more back-and-forth conversations on the phone, with more unfulfilled promises, and now we can't even get him on the phone. The counter around the sink hasn't been done except for cutting a few loose pieces, and the back-splash hasn't even been started. At this point a week and a half later we would just give up on him and hire someone else, except we already made the mistake of paying him in full in advance.