LIBERTY CONSTRUCTION

When my original tile setter got sick, he called Don McDonald in as a sub to finish the job. Don arrived with his tile setter, Joe. Don admitted to me that although he was the contractor, Joe was the better tile setter. Joe did just about all of the actual setting, and Don was his "helper", even though he was the boss. Joe did an excellent job. He did an even better job than the original tile setter that I had hired had been doing. He even pointed out an issue with the shower pan that the original guy hadn't caught, and proposed and executed a solution to solve it. Had it not been for him, we might have had serious problems down the line. The first day, they finished tiling the shower. I asked them to re-do a couple small areas that the original guy hadn't done as neatly as I'd have liked, which they did without hesitation. The 2nd day, they mortared and set the tile on the shower floor and bathroom floor. The 3rd day, they came back and grouted. I am honestly glad that Don and Joe got involved on this project, because I think Joe is a better tile setter than the guy that I originally hired.

I am a victim of their remodeling . He is a 50+ yr old contractor working with a son in his 20's. As I interacted more with his acquaintance contractors that I hired later and his former customers in my neighborhood, I found out that that the victim list just keeps growing. The worst opinions about him in fact come from his contractor acquaintances. Don McDonald, the proprietor has troubles coming up with good references. I should have listened to one of his references in Los Gatos who told me that he had to strip out all his glass tiles and the redo cost him $6000. I spent more than $5000 to redo his work. This is something I learned, you must find a good contractor with RECENT POSITIVE REFERENCE within the last 3 months. The good contractors that I hire right now are busy even during the down time because they have a solid reputation through words of mouth. I should have known better that Don could NOT come up with any recent good reference when I hired him. His skills were amateurish at best. He couldn t even cut a piece of wood straight, and none of his trim finish was tight at all. He warped my window, framed it unlevel and destroyed my newly installed hard wood floor while working. The finish was so poor that I had to fire him, strip out everything he did and redo all over again. He claimed to be a tile specialist, but I even do a better job than his glass tiles. I personally had to strip out hundreds of glass tiles and redo them myself because they were beyond ugly. When he did our two bathrooms, I didn t know the procedure, but he completely skimped on the steps and missed out on the waterproofing procedure. He used non-waterproof glue to do my glass tiles, instead of thin set. Now I am very, very worried about leaks. Apart from all the improper procedures and poor finishes, he does not listen to customers, both my husband and I told him to do things differently for waterproofing (and anyone who finished high school science should know the principles), he said he knew better although he has never finished high school. At some point, while working at OUR house, he told us to get lost. After we fired him, I dug out more about him through his subs, who have nothing but horrible stuff to say. He is known in the contractor circle to have walked away on projects, either because he was fired, or because he just couldn t finish and he walked away with customer deposit before without finishing, which happened to my Iranian neighbor three blocks down the street. Due to my tight fiscal control, he was not able to get away with that but he still over-charged a lot with sloppy finish. He was working on bowling alley in Cupertino before and was fired from the job due to unacceptable quality.