Par for the course

We're about to fire our tile/flooring contractor before he's done with his scope, which is pretty much par for the course with us and contractors. He complains about replacing glass mosaic tiles that are cracked and crooked, saying they were broken on the sheet, he didn't do it, but clearly we are not paying him to install broken tile! Now he's grouted our basement tub surround (light gray) and our master bath floor (dark gray) and the color is totally washed out because he didn't let the grout sit 20-30 min per the instructions (which are also in Spanish) before washing it. The basement bath looks ok, the grout being basically white, but the master bath floor grout is really light to the point that it jumps out and doesn't blend with the tile. It's also very inconsistent and blotchy. This guy showed us 22West, the luxury Vornado apartment building, as a reference for his work. I asked Eric if he was hiring guys off the lot at Home Depot, but Eric thinks its his sons doing the shoddy work, who are clueless.

Today we also ordered basement light trims (Halo) and our wood flooring for upstairs, from www.builddirect.com. It's a 4 3/4" wide, handscraped Hickory - the color is called Gobi - and it's very dark with a touch of red. Build Direct seems to have mixed reviews but we got a decent deal $4.05psf and 20% off shipping, and have a 30 day money-back guarantee. We decided to go with hardwood in the end so we could potentially sand it down and refinish it in the future, which is greener than bamboo, which can't be refinished and engineered wood, that would just have to be torn out and replaced.