Easton Construction LLC

It started out promising. We needed a bathtub taken out and replaced with a walk-in shower to help my elderly father, who was moving in with us. We also asked for a corner bench that my father could sit on if he needed. My wife showed him the one in our shower as an example. In this, my wife did most of the communicating with Mr Easton because she was home and I was not. Mr Easton talked a good game about his qualifications and other jobs he has done. I walked through the job with him and told him what we wanted. He told me that he would do part and he would have a plumbing sub-contractor do part and a flooring sub-contractor finish up with the tile work. I asked specifically how long the job would take to do everything. He told me it would take about 7-10 days. The deal was to pay half up front and the rest upon completion of the job. The job started out promising. The old tub and surround were removed in one day, along with the walls around the tub. The second day, the plumbing was put in and the flooring was prepared for the tiling. That was where things started to go bad. The tile man apparently chipped some of the regular floor tile while preparing the shower floor. He asked if we had any of the floor tile, but we didn't. He went ahead with tiling the shower floor right up to the bathroom floor (there is no threshold by design due to tripping concerns) My wife asked him about fixing the chipped tiles. He told her that he was just putting it in place temporarily so that they could get an accurate measurement for the special order shower doors (around $1700) so that it would fit right. I saw this as total BS when I came home from work and found that the "temporary" tile placement was already grouted in. When my wife asked about this the next day, she was told by Mr Easton that it was, in fact, permanent, but not to worry, because nobody would really see it. By that time, with all the no-show days, we were into the third week. My wife asked Mr Easton about this, and he said that HIS part was the 7-10 days, but with ordering and installing the custom shower door, it would be about 3 weeks for the job to be finished. The rest of the tiling seemed to go well, but when I came home from work at the end of the third week, I saw something gray splattered up on the shower ceiling and the sheetrock on the edge of the shower cracked and chipped and discolored. There was a crack about 3 inches from the corner running almost floor to ceiling. It had NOT been there before they started. When asked about this, Mr Easton said he would have his tile guy take care of it. The shower was reportedly finished about 4 weeks in, except for the fact that there was no shower door. That took another week and a half. When it was put in, I could not for the life of me see where the high pricetag came from. It consisted of a sheet of glass that made up a wall about 60% of the opening for the shower. It was held in place by a small metal channel on one wall and on the floor. The glass itself was held in that channel only by silicone caulking. This left the part next to the door unattached to anything and very easily moved back and forth. I worried that my father could lose his balance and fall against that wall, which would not hold him up and would probably shatter upon hitting the floor. I asked for a bracket of some sort to hold the wall in place. Mr. Easton complied and charged about $250 extra. The door was just another piece of that same glass. It had three hinges holding it to the wall. This custom measured, custom made door had a half inch gap between it and the glass wall, and nothing in place to keep the door from swinging freely, creating the hazard of it striking the tiled bench and probably breaking. When this was pointed out to Mr Easton, he said that the gap was small and that it wouldn't let much water out of the shower. When we pushed the issue, he ordered a plastic piece that filled the gap and stopped the door from swinging free into the shower. It would seem that the job was done, and only 5 weeks into the 7-10 days originally promised. But wait, there's more. The first time that the shower was used, the drain backed up and flooded about half of my downstairs area. When we called Mr Easton, he came over eventually with another man and checked the drain. He kept saying that it must have been a clog somewhere else in the line until he pulled out a handful of tile thinset mortar and grout. That was when he realized that his tile guy had failed to mask the drain while he was working on the shower. In the meantime, he sent over a clean-up guy who tore out half of the flooring and dried the bedroom carpet and the rest of the affected wet flooring. It took another almost three weeks for them to order and install the replacement flooring in the downstairs, and still they had not cleaned the stuff splattered on the ceiling or fixed the cracked wall. This they had to be reminded of. This small job had now gone over two months. Mr Easton called and told my wife that he was on his way over to drop off the new baseboard (they had hauled away and trashed about a third of what had been down there) and to pick up his check. My wife told him that the job was not completed and that the wall and ceiling had not been fixed, in addition to the baseboard not being installed. The flooring guy had completely stopped returning our phone calls and texts. She said that he would not be paid until the job was completed, as agreed upon. His response was, "Isn't it a bit silly to hold up a $5000 check over a couple of small things like that?" To his credit, he apologized for that comment when he arrived at the house. Within about two days, the wall was fixed, the splatter was cleaned up, and MOST of the baseboard had been installed. I installed the baseboard in two closets that had not been done. By this time, we were just happy to be done with this fiasco. Easton Construction was paid their full fee.