Fair and Square

This fiasco all started when I hired Trey to come out and install a front door that I purchased. He subcontracted it out to someone else. He tells me, «I am not making anything off this deal because I am more interested in your flooring work.» I ended up paying Trey the price it would have cost me to have a actual door guy come in and install it and it probably would have not taken him 6 hours to do it.
I got an email that told me that he and his tile guy were «hungry» for some work because pretty much nothing was going on. I was looking to put my house on the market and figured he could cut me a good deal because they were hungry for work. He told me it would cost me $ 2.00 per square foot of tile, which was not bad at all because Lowes was going to charge me $ 2.99 a sq ft for install. Little did I know that $ 2 a sq ft install was an after thought. We originally decided 1000 sq ft of tile which ended up more like 800 sq ft. I still paid the 1000 sq ft price to «give it a cushion in case things came up». The tile guy had over 15 years of tile experience, so I figured what could go wrong? I was told the job would take about a week and a half. I was doing the 2 bathrooms upstairs and all of the downstairs. The total job took almost 5 weeks. The big problem is that the tile guy would come in and leave like 3 hours later. He would bad mouth Trey and Trey would bad mouth the tile guy. I had to rent a floor stripper to take up some laminate floors and some 8 inch ceramic tile. Because of a flat tire, the stripper sat in my house for an extra day because they had to go get that taken care of and I paid for that extra day. In fact, I paid for an extra day that the stripper went to another job site.
I am not sure where the 15 year tile guy learned to do tile but there are places where he started getting lazy. He did not cut under door jams. He left big ½ inch gaps against the wall. He told me, «The trim will cover it, no problem.» I had to show him that that it would not, he had to use extra grout to cover it. I opted for them to remove the floor trim so I could install new floor trim, which was nicer. That was a big mistake. I was then charged $ 1.50 per linear foot for trim install. (It was then told me since Trey’s brother was going to install it, it was going to cost $ 1.00 per foot.) I still paid $ 1.50 but I felt sorry for Greg since he was just looking to keep busy with work.
I ended up keeping Greg on for some paint work that I needed to get done. Greg is a good guy and a hard worker. My only complaint with Greg was I was always putting diesel in his truck. I understand he was working for his brother and he was just trying to make some money to get his car out of the shop. I can also understand perhaps putting gas in his truck maybe 2 or 3 times during the 5 weeks he was at my house, but almost every time he was at my house? That is a little excessive. We did use his truck to run to get supplies at Home Depot.
I had hired Greg to make a run to storage, paying for his lunch, gas, etc. I figured it was only fitting because it was going to cost me on upwards of $ 100+ to rent a truck and do all of this. On the way back, I had to buy a tire for his truck at 7pm on Saturday night. In return, Greg tells me he will work for me for a day and a half. He comes in, maybe works about 6 hours and then leaves. He then wants to come out before the holiday weekend because he owes me one hour and figures he can work like ½ a day so he can have some spending money for the lake. I decide to pass on him paying me back the hour and cut my losses because I figured I would end up putting more diesel in his truck and it would cost me more than it was worth.
What is ironic is that Greg tells me they have some new sub contractors for flooring and they are awesome. He then tells me that I probably, «Could not afford them because they charge more.» I asked Greg, «What is more?» When he told me what they charged, it was more than I had paid originally. What is even funnier, the job would have taken the one and a half weeks they told me originally.
Overall Trey and Greg are good guys. They just need to stop the sub contracting business because its only hurting their business. If you do do business with them, keep records of everything and do it in writing. If you agree on a price, make them stick to it. I kept having to keep funneling money into this project because people needed to get paid. I had to keep reminding them the job was paid in full but there was some «extras» that I still needed to pay. The total job should have cost me about $ 3500 for the whole job. It ended up being closer to $ 5000.
If I had to do it all over again, I should have opted to go with Lowes, they would have gone up to the original floor trim and would not have done the transitions that Trey did. The project would have finished on time and under budget.