Cornerstone Masonry

Bert Perkey representing Cornerstone Masonry agreed to repair a damaged bathroom floor and install tile on the new floor.   Bert took me to a store that he does business with to pick out the tile. He showed me several options of 12” X 12” travertine tile to select from. I picked out an appropriate color for the bathroom. Bert bought the tile and supplies later when I was not with him.   Bert removed the cabinet and toilet and took up the linoleum floor. He did not replace the water damaged subfloor as we had agreed. Although we did not have a written contract Bert had agreed to replace the subflooring. This is the standard method for water damage according to several experts. Bert laid the tile and replaced the toilet and cabinet. He instructed us not to walk on the floor for a couple of days until it had set.   After the wait period we began to use the bathroom. Immediately the grout between the tiles cracked and a few tiles broke. Bert agreed to repair the damage. He came back and ground the grout out of the tile and removed the broken tiles. He replaced the broken tiles and used a different type of flexible grout to keep it from cracking again. My wife and I had learned from other sources that cracked grout was probably caused by an unlevel subfloor. We discussed this with Bert, but he would not fix the unlevel floor problem. He then told us that he had not replaced the damaged subfloor, but had covered it with cement.   Bert was not able to scrub the excess flexible grout off of the tiles like he had done with the first grout. So he used a metallic tool to scrape this grout off of the tiles. This left many of the tiles roughly scratched from the metallic tool he used to scrape the grout. He also broke one of the tiles.   There were 12 tiles seriously damaged by scraping. Bert agreed to replace them and the broken one. He instructed me to go back to the store and buy the replacement tiles. The store did not have any more tiles to match the ones on our bathroom floor. This store deals with overruns and odd lots and could not match the tiles. I contacted several other flooring stores for replacement tiles, but no one could match them exactly. I told Bert that I was not able to find replacement tiles and that he would have to do that. I haven’t heard from him in several months.   Other flooring contractors tell me that the whole floor needs to be taken up and the subfloor replaced with new cement board. Then the floor can be retiled. Bert doesn’t seem to be knowledgeable about how to correct these problems and can’t be relied on to fix it.