Skipping past all the stressful days from early December to today, Jan 20...
On Wednesday Jan 18 I went to the Windsor Home Depot nearest my home and purchased the porcelain tile I had actually picked out at a Evers store near work several months ago. (It was coincidental that I had to go home over my dinner break. Normally I like to purchase stuff where I pick it out, and I like the Evers store where I picked it out, so I would have bought the tile there if I could have. Contractors generally like to pick up from store nearest my home, so this was better for them.) I was feeling a little guilty about not buying at the other store, but the salesperson at the Windsor store was very helpful. She helped me pick out the Flexbond adhesive which is top notch. She also helped me pick out the polyblend grout color that seemed to match the tile most nicely. I noticed quite a few of the tile boxes seemed to have been mishandled, but she assured me that there would be enough good tiles in their stock to meet my needs.
The next day the Supervisor texted me that lots of tiles were cracked, so he had gotten home depot to provide an extra two boxes, their last ones. I had fears that I would be seeing lots of cracked tiles...
However on Thursday night I observed tile, and it looked perfect. Under dim light, it converted the workshop from rough garage to palace. I noticed that they had centered the tile in the room, so that the center grout line goes right down the middle of the room, and in between the two french doors. Of course that also meant there were cut tiles around all the sides, and that they could get the most use of cracked or chipped tiles. But anyway, it was probably the nicer way to do the installation. I was feeling good. Grout had not yet been installed.
Today (Friday) the grout was installed. When I observed the situation a few hours later, I was horrified. Instead of the nice match between tile and grout, the grout looked grey and irregular, and stood out clearly from the tile.
Now I see this is a common problem with polyblend grouts. There are various tricks and treatments to correct it. Here is a good discussion. Here's one colored Grout Sealer available in colors to match all different colored grouts. Otherwise, most grout companies make colored grout sealers to match their own colored grout colors. Custom Building Products (maker of my Polyblend grout) makes at least two kinds: Grout Renew and Aquamix, the latter being a water based low-VOC formulation. The Home Depot here only carries Grout Renew and only carries it in a few colors...though that does include the Haystack color my grout was supposed to be. Now I'm thinking I want a slightly darker/richer color. The display of my chosen tile (Brazilian Slate) is grouted with Fawn #156. In the store that looks slightly richer (more saturated) and slightly darker than Haystack. But under my kitchen light, Haystack looks darker.
Here's a list of other colored grout sealers:
Enrich N Seal
Mapei (Mocha is said to be nice on top of Haystack)
C-Cure
DuPont Stone Tec Professional
Another trick is suggested: wash with 50% vinegar in water solution to clean and remove hard water deposits which add white cast.
There appear to be as many as 4 boxes of tile left over, so having enough good tiles does not look like it was actually a problem. (Update: On Sunday night I returned 3 apparently unopened boxes of tile. A fourth box was opened, so I checked each of those tiles out carefully and kept 7 perfect ones as spares, one was cracked and got returned to Home Depot along with the 3 unopened boxes. Credit was about $25 per box. I also got credit on one unopened bag of Flex Bond. Another bag left by contractor had holes in it and I decided to have contractor dispose of that when they were cleaning up. The tilers had only apparently needed 2 bags of Flex Bond, and left about 1/8 bag or more in each of those two. The spec by Custom is 90-100sqft for one bag so that would be 1.65 bags for 165 square feet.)
Now the contractor wants the second to the last payment of $2000. The last payment would be about $1500. This is making me very uncomfortable, considering all the unfinished work and remaining issues:
1) Interior trim (window, baseboard, AC, french doors*).
2) Install and seal around AC.
3) Exterior trim around french doors.
4) Exterior paint and caulk touch up (at least one very thin seam in back).
5) Shelves including large 30" deep shelf in back.
6) Clean up of site, including stuff left by current contractor, and previous contractor. The previous contractor left intimidatingly large pieces of scrap concrete, including one right next to slab, slab forms still in place, and long and short pieces of rebar, including #6 rebar. It was agreed and specified in contract that all this stuff would be removed.* The current contractor has left scads of stuff related to tile installation, sheetrock, and bags of scraped foam.
(*The price shown in contract for removing concrete spoils, forms, and rebar left by previous contractor is $275. Somehow I don't think I could get the job done for anything close to that. Maybe $750, or more. This would require work like demolition work, breaking apart huge mounds of concrete, but done carefully, so as not to disturb slab. It's not a job for junk busters. That has always made me nervous. Anyway, since this is a fixed price contract, in theory the contractor is supposed to get the job done regardless of how much it ultimately costs them. But contractors are notorious for either finding ways to shift excess costs onto homeowner or leave work undone or done in substandard way. This happened during the spray foaming, though I'm basically satisfied with how that ultimately worked out, I payed a mere $635 extra for a dual-foam approach which seems fine to me in principle, though it could have been argued I should have gotten a refund instead of paying more for it, since I was filling in the walls with mostly cheaper open cell foam. As I've said before, this makes me understand why DoD has been known for using Cost-Plus contracts, so as not to be subject to inferior products or work, though at a high price.)
On Wednesday Jan 18 I went to the Windsor Home Depot nearest my home and purchased the porcelain tile I had actually picked out at a Evers store near work several months ago. (It was coincidental that I had to go home over my dinner break. Normally I like to purchase stuff where I pick it out, and I like the Evers store where I picked it out, so I would have bought the tile there if I could have. Contractors generally like to pick up from store nearest my home, so this was better for them.) I was feeling a little guilty about not buying at the other store, but the salesperson at the Windsor store was very helpful. She helped me pick out the Flexbond adhesive which is top notch. She also helped me pick out the polyblend grout color that seemed to match the tile most nicely. I noticed quite a few of the tile boxes seemed to have been mishandled, but she assured me that there would be enough good tiles in their stock to meet my needs.
The next day the Supervisor texted me that lots of tiles were cracked, so he had gotten home depot to provide an extra two boxes, their last ones. I had fears that I would be seeing lots of cracked tiles...
However on Thursday night I observed tile, and it looked perfect. Under dim light, it converted the workshop from rough garage to palace. I noticed that they had centered the tile in the room, so that the center grout line goes right down the middle of the room, and in between the two french doors. Of course that also meant there were cut tiles around all the sides, and that they could get the most use of cracked or chipped tiles. But anyway, it was probably the nicer way to do the installation. I was feeling good. Grout had not yet been installed.
Today (Friday) the grout was installed. When I observed the situation a few hours later, I was horrified. Instead of the nice match between tile and grout, the grout looked grey and irregular, and stood out clearly from the tile.
Now I see this is a common problem with polyblend grouts. There are various tricks and treatments to correct it. Here is a good discussion. Here's one colored Grout Sealer available in colors to match all different colored grouts. Otherwise, most grout companies make colored grout sealers to match their own colored grout colors. Custom Building Products (maker of my Polyblend grout) makes at least two kinds: Grout Renew and Aquamix, the latter being a water based low-VOC formulation. The Home Depot here only carries Grout Renew and only carries it in a few colors...though that does include the Haystack color my grout was supposed to be. Now I'm thinking I want a slightly darker/richer color. The display of my chosen tile (Brazilian Slate) is grouted with Fawn #156. In the store that looks slightly richer (more saturated) and slightly darker than Haystack. But under my kitchen light, Haystack looks darker.
Here's a list of other colored grout sealers:
Enrich N Seal
Mapei (Mocha is said to be nice on top of Haystack)
C-Cure
DuPont Stone Tec Professional
Another trick is suggested: wash with 50% vinegar in water solution to clean and remove hard water deposits which add white cast.
There appear to be as many as 4 boxes of tile left over, so having enough good tiles does not look like it was actually a problem. (Update: On Sunday night I returned 3 apparently unopened boxes of tile. A fourth box was opened, so I checked each of those tiles out carefully and kept 7 perfect ones as spares, one was cracked and got returned to Home Depot along with the 3 unopened boxes. Credit was about $25 per box. I also got credit on one unopened bag of Flex Bond. Another bag left by contractor had holes in it and I decided to have contractor dispose of that when they were cleaning up. The tilers had only apparently needed 2 bags of Flex Bond, and left about 1/8 bag or more in each of those two. The spec by Custom is 90-100sqft for one bag so that would be 1.65 bags for 165 square feet.)
Now the contractor wants the second to the last payment of $2000. The last payment would be about $1500. This is making me very uncomfortable, considering all the unfinished work and remaining issues:
1) Interior trim (window, baseboard, AC, french doors*).
2) Install and seal around AC.
3) Exterior trim around french doors.
4) Exterior paint and caulk touch up (at least one very thin seam in back).
5) Shelves including large 30" deep shelf in back.
6) Clean up of site, including stuff left by current contractor, and previous contractor. The previous contractor left intimidatingly large pieces of scrap concrete, including one right next to slab, slab forms still in place, and long and short pieces of rebar, including #6 rebar. It was agreed and specified in contract that all this stuff would be removed.* The current contractor has left scads of stuff related to tile installation, sheetrock, and bags of scraped foam.
(*The price shown in contract for removing concrete spoils, forms, and rebar left by previous contractor is $275. Somehow I don't think I could get the job done for anything close to that. Maybe $750, or more. This would require work like demolition work, breaking apart huge mounds of concrete, but done carefully, so as not to disturb slab. It's not a job for junk busters. That has always made me nervous. Anyway, since this is a fixed price contract, in theory the contractor is supposed to get the job done regardless of how much it ultimately costs them. But contractors are notorious for either finding ways to shift excess costs onto homeowner or leave work undone or done in substandard way. This happened during the spray foaming, though I'm basically satisfied with how that ultimately worked out, I payed a mere $635 extra for a dual-foam approach which seems fine to me in principle, though it could have been argued I should have gotten a refund instead of paying more for it, since I was filling in the walls with mostly cheaper open cell foam. As I've said before, this makes me understand why DoD has been known for using Cost-Plus contracts, so as not to be subject to inferior products or work, though at a high price.)
How about some photos?
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