Sal Costa Tile

Sal Costa presented himself as a knowledgable and nice guy who provided the lowest bid on our den floor and two small bathrooms. He did an OK job on the first two projects except for the broken window and scratches on our new hardwood floors that he never repaired. About half way through the second bathroom he started working less and less up to a point when we had to go find him at his house. He then stopped showing all together and filed bankruptcy. He has about $1000 of our money which we will probably never get back and we had to hire someone else to finish his work. If you come across this man, run, run away, as fast as you can. He also operates under a new business name, Aenaria Bathroom Remodels.

Mr. Costa returned my initial calls timely and appeared for his bid on time. He stopped being timely once he had my check in his hand (for materials and half the labor). He started the job a day late because his workers ditched him for a better paying job. He said this is a constant problem, from which I deduced that that's why his bid was $1,000 lower than the other 4 bids I received: He underpays his workers and they jump ship for even $50 more from someone else. He said the job would take 4 days. It took almost 2 weeks. He complained that he was often late and left early because he was overextended with too much other work to attend to. He dinged and gouged and chipped every floor, wall, cupboard and molding he came near; his clean-up was substandard with dust everywhere and grout mud left on every wall. The placement of tile design was artless and flat out wrong on every floor. Now that it's all cemented in place I have to learn to live with it. Three days into the job he called to ask me to advance him $500 from what I owed him, to pay his worker. I said "no," he'd get the money when the job was done, as agreed. He hung up on me. And his attitude after that was not exactly unpleasant, but it was strained. It was further strained after I pleaded with him to stop gouging and banging up my apartment. He never prepared a detailed bid or produced receipts for materials; he just wrote a figure on a blank form, showed it to me, then took it back. He wasn't prepared to place thresholds in the spaces where the tile met the hardwood floors, and left me to hire my wood floor man to make and install them (more time, money and nuisance for me). Altogether a very unhappy experience for me. Mr. Costa is friendly and seems to know what he's talking about, and I believe he's an honest soul, but he's not a reliable professional, and he certainly lacks the artistry required for placing tiles in a pleasing and correct manner. Of course he was unable to show up on time at 9am when I leave for work, so I had to give him house keys to let himself in at his leisure. So, I wasn't there to supervise closely. I really didn't think I needed to. He represented himself as a true experienced professional. I learned the hard way that you really do get what you pay for. I thought I would save on labor in order to afford nicer tiles and stay on budget. Wrong choice.