GARCIA IMPORTED TILE CO INC

From Customer Service to the installation of my new counter tops, Garcia is the place to go period. I've had experience in this area, and all I can say is they are unmatched when it comes to efficiency, service and care.

I picked the tile out in June, but it was almost a month before I got a quote because owner was on vacation. The work was finally scheduled for Oct 5th when an installer returned from vacation. My husband did the deconstruction and prep of the bathroom with the exception of the cement board, which we had installed by the professionals since they were doing the tile work. The thought process, which I shared with the owner, was that they would do what was necessary to the walls(square everything up) for proper tile installation. Tile installer arrived on time and put dropclothes down on the stairs and carpeting which led me to believe he was concerned about leaving a mess. Brownie points for that. Day 1: He installed the shower pan and cement board Day 2: Cement board was still drying Days 3 & 4: The shower and flooring were installed Day 5: The grout was applied. The work was completed in an expedient manner, but the work was done very sloppily. We have a pony wall in the bathroom, one side is part of the shower, the other side is adjacent to the vanity and untiled. The area where the tile ended was a complete mess. The cement board was not laid flat, so there was a huge gap between the tiled area and the drywall. In addition, the tile was sticking out beyond the untiled wall about 1/4" at the top and 1/2" at the bottom. The front of the pony wall stuck out at the bottom, it was not even top to bottom. It was impossible to finish the area and make it look decent. I called the owner about the problem and sent him pictures. He was very responsive and his workers who were installing the countertop examined the pony wall problem. They agreed the work would need to be redone and he ordered replacement bullnose tiles saying he would contact me to schedule the work when he received them. In the meantime, we discovered several other issues. Tiles were not lined up properly. One of the floor tiles in the corner near the vanity was sticking way up beyond the other tiles, so there would be no way to install the front veneer flat to the floor. There were very obvious areas where tiles stuck up higher than adjacent tiles. Grout lines are not a uniform size, most noticeably around the listello area. The shower wall has an obvious bow to it . One of the tiles was actually installed backwards, that is, wrong side out. It is a very small piece in an non-obvious area which we discovered a few weeks later, but really???? The grout color did not match what we ordered, I believe there was efflorescence. The granite top of the pony wall was not laid evenly. There was so much grout and cement applied that we are still working on removing the excess 6 weeks later. When we went to reapply the wood moulding to the floor, we had to spend 4 hours scraping all the build up of grout/cement off the wall so the moulding would lie flat (these are walls with no tile on them). Bathroom door, doorknob, light switches and window all had dirty fingerprints on them My husband spent all of last Saturday cleaning all the grout/cement residue from our flagstone walkway outside. I asked the owner to come by so we could address all the problems with him. He agreed that the walls should have been made square when the cement board was installed. As for the other issues, his response was that his installer has been doing it for 35 years and should know better. When I asked him about the grout color, he said it was correct. I ordered gray, grout was bright white, I asked him about efflorescence and he just brushed it off. ( I have since read up on it and washed the grout down with a mild acid to remove the white powdery layer. It now looks gray.) Overall, he gave the job a "B". The installer returned to "fix" the pony wall problem. He removed the tile and replaced it and added a metal strip to round the corner. Unfortunately, this time besides the mess he left from all the grout and cement he removed, he dropped cement on my bedroom carpeting. Also, though the wall does look better, the problem still exists that the bottom sticks out further than the top. The metal strip was bent so it could be nailed in. We still need to come up with a creative way to finish the wall, since the adjacent tile is flush at top and sticking out 1/2" beyond the wall at the bottom. The cement board on that section of the pony wall needed to be removed and laid flat, but he didn't do that. We give up at this point, we really don't want the installer back in the house. The owner did offer to have him come back and fix the backwards tile. It's just not worth the mess, we'll do it ourselves. It's frustrating that we have had to spend many, many hours cleaning, hiding, correcting work of "professionals". My rating would have been lower, if not for the responsiveness of the owner. He tried to work with us to improve things, but the bathroom would have had to be gutted and redone to fix all the problems. He did give us about a 10% discount on the labor portion of our bill (the price above reflects the discount). Overall, I'm happy with my tile choice and design, I just can't look too close at details.

He was wonderful. He was very helpful when we went down to pick out the tile, his men were absolutely magnificent when they came in to lay the tile and they did the countertop perfectly. We didn't have any trouble with the countertops at all. In fact we're having some more work done and we're going to call him again.

Garcia Tile was a great place to work with. We had a new kitchen counter installed by another company but couldn't find the right tile for the backsplash. We started looking around at other stores and found Garcia Tile. They have a great selection of tile. Everyone was great to work with. It took us some time to decide on the tile but once we made a decision, they quickly ordered and installed the tile. I thought I would end up paying more for what I chose, but the price was great, too.