[EDIT] 310 did make good on the promise below to send someone back to fix things. The work were more extensive than we expected, but we're very pleased with the final result. The shower tiling was redone and looks much better, plus a nice backsplash was added. The plumbing was redone as well and everything looks good. The process to get here was long, but in the end, it's the final result that counts. [/EDIT]
Our renovation didn’t fit with the bulk of the reviews here, and it’s difficult to understand why our job went sideways. While it’s clear that 310 does have a vast amount of experience, we saw neither expertise nor care during the execution of our project. Originally the contract to gut and renovate the bathroom was estimated at 2-3 weeks. By the end, we called it a day at 8 weeks, but we’re still finding things that weren’t done, or were done poorly. I think the main problem was that there was no planning stage; planning being the stage where we discuss what the final product is, and is separate from the contract stage where we discuss what major items the job includes. We brought this up, but were told the job was really too small to require it. In the beginning it proceeded well with good communication and while progress was slow, we were happy. However, by the time it got to finishing, things went south very quickly. Items we’d carefully selected and paid good money for weren’t shown care, items were broken (replaced by 310, but having to be special ordered), and the lack of a good plan became really evident. We did communicate with the 310 mothership, but the course did not change. My own assessment is it got to a point that no one was happy about the job and because of that we were getting poor work. The final product looks good at a glance, as you can see in the pictures, because we spent good time and money choosing nice fixtures and cabinetry to go in. However the installation finishes are lacking. Mosaic tiles are crooked, grout is cracked, caulking is peeling (applied to dirty surfaces?).
We hired 310 hoping that by contracting an all in one rather than hiring the trades individually we’d get them as a first line of defense in quality control and a central location for expertise. It would have been cheaper to hire the trades individually, but the spread over this would have been worth it if the job was well supervised and had a good outcome. This was not the case, and there was a lot of shortcomings. Vent fans were blowing attic insulation into the bathroom. Cabinet doors drilled and installed backwards (after a long discussion to get them installed at all). Each of these is a small item for me to fix, but it’s frustrating to have to do so after shelling out 12K on labour in a small bathroom. Things like the crooked mosaic tiles may never get fixed. As I said, I was happy with the first half of the job, but it’s the second half that sits visibly on the surface.
We’ve always done careful research in deciding on a contractor and have never had this type of experience. Contrary to most of the reviews here, I don’t think we saw anything approaching what should be expected for this kind of money.
