Jose Antonio Bran

The job went poorly. I was not aware when we signed the contract that Mr. Bran would not be on my job regularly. A day into the job, I learned he had another job and only came to my place after hours. His own work was above average. In fact, he cut tiles in my bathroom and inserted decorator tiles. His work was excellent - I don't know how he managed to do it so well as he came out of the bathrooms looking like a snowman from all the tile dust. I was very pleased with that part of the work. The problem was with his obviously untrained employees. The baseboards throughout the house were to be removed and replaced. They also cut the door facings about 1/4 inch at the bottom. They filled that area back up with grout which looks awful. I knew the baseboards were to be removed, but did not know the door facings were to be cut, and would not have agreeed to that. When they put the baseboards back, they are mismatched at the corners throughout the house. In the halls and bathrooms they are even missing small baseboard pieces throughout. They filled in those areas with grout which looks horrible The floor tiles were laid on the diagonal and over a large area that is a difficult job. The tile work was average or just a little above average. The backsplash tiles also laid on the diagonal are also average or a little above. I think his employees dis-respected my home and my belongings. They were on the job 10 days straight and the days were often 12 hours long. I felt I had to be present for the entire time they were there, but I could not oversee the work as I had to exist in another part of the house where they were not working . It was awful trying to live in the never-ending dust that was created. Also, two of the carpets that remained were severely damaged by the employees during the work. Those two had to be repaired and another two two were replaced all at my own cost as they did not match up to the t.ile. Antonio agreed to make good on the baseboards by removing and replacing at his own expense the base in the hall and both bathrooms and doing a couple of other minor touch ups at his expense. I was to buy the stain, but he would pay for the rest. That agreement was subsequent to completion of the work on 8 May 2011. As of May 26, 2012, he has not returned to do the baseboards. Letters sent to his address in our contract came back undeliverable. I did not call him and have decided to let it go and be done with it - and I will have the baseboards removed and replaced at my own expense rather than deal with him again although I found him very pleasant. The icing on the cake came when the kitchen stove had to be pulled out in April 2012 to find out why it was sitting a little far out into the room. That is when we found the floor tile courses stopped two courses short of completion under the stove. The front was sitting on tile - the back was sitting on the sub-floor. It would only have taken about six more tiles which were available to finish the job. Sloppy work. Antonio surely had to know it was that way because he helped lay the porcelain backsplash which ran behind the stove. They also shorted the backsplash behind the stove- which I noticed before they left. I requested and they did lay one more row of tile behind the stove which gave a more finished look. In order to do that - they surely had to pull out the stove and should have noticed the lack of tiles under the stove. Certainly the tile layer knew what he had done to the floor. This will have to be corrected probably at my expense since I have lost contact with Antonio. Also, the staining of the back porch floor was of poor quality in my opinion. I would not use Antonio Bran Tile Contractor again, and I certainly do not recommend.