Fulmer Ceramic Tile, Marble and Stone
Serving Columbus, WI and surrounding areas
Approved
In business since 1993
Free estimates
Customers say: Super punctual
"We saw the great reviews for Fulmer tile on Angie's list so held out for him even though he was very busy. We liked the idea of having a small family business do the job. We literally waited 9 months for the job, with the hole in our wall covered with a garbage bag from October until June. He originally thought he would have time in January, but we finally got the July dates on the schedule. The estimate was for $1,118.50. Gary and his crew were personable and prompt, and went right to work. On the second day, when Gary said the crew would start tiling the surround and he would come by noonish, I expressed my concern, because the reason we had waited so long was to have him do a professional job in the tub surround, which seemed like the more difficult area, and we wanted a quality job. He assured me that it would be a cake walk for his experienced crew. There were two problems with the job. One was that they used the wrong pencil line tiles. I had shown Gary the tiles we were using, but between showing him that first day and his crew tiling the second day, communication dropped somewhere along the line. Prior to the job, before we had found the correct tile, we had purchased a "bird-in-the-hand" pencil line, and the crew used that one instead of the final choice. It was 10x as expensive as the one we wanted, so that was a bummer -- Gary did point it out to me after the tiles were all up, when he realized the error. He offered to tear it all out and use the desired pencil line. That seemed extreme, and I figured the tiles wouldn't clean up well enough to return anyway, so I tried to be a good sport and shrugged it off as "it's just money, right?" What I did not realize at the time was that the expensive tile they used was also 1/8" wider and threw off the line so the new surround tiles don't line up with the adjacent wall tiles. I was too flustered about the cost difference and trying not to over-react so I didn't clue in enough. I share the blame for the poor communication and for leaving the wider expensive tiles out with the other materials, and for not evaluating more carefully when he offered to tear it out, but I do wish that the worker had brought it to my attention as soon as he saw that the wide pencil tile would throw the line off. You can also see in the photos that some of the tiles are slightly skewed and the pencil lines don't line up in the corners, etc. The other main problem with the job was the grout. Gary left a less experienced worker to do that without any oversight. The worker asked us to continue wiping the grout after he left (which seemed a little weird). We did contact Gary that evening, letting him know that there was a lot of grout still left on the tiles, and expressing concern that the grout would harden too much by the next day to fix it. Gary said it would be fine the next day. They did come out and work on it the next day, but after they fixed it as much as they could, even Gary said that it was not a good grout job. Gary did not charge us for retiling the surround because of the bad grout job, and subtracted that $315 off of our bill. I would have far preferred to pay the whole price for a quality job. He added on $60 for reinstalling the grab bars when rebuilding the surround; I'm not sure why that wouldn't have been included in the original estimate. The final bill was $962.50. In summary, the bathroom absolutely does look way better than when we started -- the tub surround doesn't have a huge hole in it, and the floor tile is a big improvement. It is probably a better job than we could have done ourselves, and we didn't have to do it. They were pleasant people to deal with. Gary did try to make good on the problem by discounting the bill, although he couldn't fix the problems. I definitely would not have waited 9 months if I knew it would turn out like this. I would either decide to go with a big shop (for a hopefully more professional job and higher bill), or with our regular contractor who is less experienced with tile (for a similar level of job and similar price but a lot faster). [in my ratings I considered responsiveness to be the January->July delay; punctuality to be each day on the job]"
+66
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