SOUTHWEST TILE & MARBLE

Description of Work: Southwest Southern Tile Inc. - My honest and truthful review of Eli Calderon, owner. Chapter 1 – The Beginning. My husband and I have always loved walk-in showers with mosaic tile and tubs off to the side with beautiful fixtures and various different textures and tile used; mosaic vs glass vs regular tile. We were very excited about putting a shower of this magnitude into our master bathroom. After Butch Lee Baker Jr of B&B Handyman Services LLC gutted a portion of the shower and then was later fired for lack of work and not knowing what he was doing. Sean Thompson of Professional Home Renovations, Oklahoma City, OK was hired and did the majority of taking the old shower completely out and dropping the area down to the studs and installation of adding a water line. He further proceeded to put up hardie backerboard and since his exposure to doing ceramic and mosaic tile was non-existent, he hired a new tile guy three days later that he has never worked with, Richard "Eli" Calderon, owner of Southwest Southern Tile Inc., and brought him into my home to custom lay ceramic tile and mosaic tile around the shower and bathtub area. Chapter 2 - The Bathtub Under Taking. The project started out good in that he looked like he knew what he was doing by checking the hardie backerboard to make sure it was sound. He then mixed Thinset and applied it on the walls and started on the bathtub re-creation. He would put the Thinset on the wall he was working on and then place the tile in a diamond pattern (90 degrees he called it) to give the bathtub more definition and to not look like the floor pattern. It was working cause my eye went to the pattern on the tub rather than the floors. I was intrigued with the pattern he chose. He then did all the ceramic tile he could around the base of the tub and then moved onto the custom shower. Chapter 3 - The Shower Under Taking. He continued that 90 degree pattern in the custom shower to give your eye a smooth transition from the tub area to the shower area and vice versa. He finished as much of the ceramic tile he could and then moved onto the mosaic tile and there was a lot to put up. He still looked like he knew what he was doing as the tile was setting and he put the "X" spacers between the tiles to give a certain gap so the grout lines were the same all around & nothing looked/appeared wider than it should be. Chapter 4 - The Shower Got Overlooked. He started laying the mosaic tile I picked out around the curve of the shower leading into the shower but then somehow the picture my husband and I remembered seeing prior was overlooked and he laid 12" ceramic tile that he used to start the bathtub with. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I would never like it and asked Eli Calderon, Southwest Southern Tile Inc., to take it off and put up mosaic tile. There was some grumbling, but he agreed to do it. So, the search was on to get more mosaic tile. More mosaic tile was found on several different trips by me. It looked a lot better. Chapter 5 - Shock Hit. Here’s the list: (1) Shower and tub area: while it looks beautiful and the tile has been supposedly sealed, we found numerous areas where the grout is cracked or where there is no grout at all (see attached pictures) (2) Cleanliness: Eli never cleaned up the bathroom as he said he would when he first started. He spilled a cup of coffee on the counter and left a set in stain on our Corain counter tops. There were nails and sharp pieces of grout left in the carpet that my husband stepped on and cut the bottom of his foot. (3) Overall work quality: Eli did a nice job of laying tile but did a horrible job of grouting and sealing. Since the general contractor, Sean Thompson was to oversee Eli Calderon's work, many things were overlooked in our master shower/tub area in addition to our children's Jack and Jill bathrooms (pictures attached). We need to hire another skilled tile guy to fix the problems Eli Calderon of Southwest Southern Tile Inc. left behind in addition, to the cracking grout in both my children’s bathrooms, completely missing grout around one whole tile and all the issues in the master shower and around the newly placed whirlpool tub including sealing everything. (4) Professionalism: Non-existent, Eli Calderon, made inappropriate advances towards me even though I told him numerous times I was happily married. With Sean Thompson, General Contractor there, Eli Calderon told me I have beautiful eyes that he never noticed and couldn't stop staring at me. All in all showed extremely inappropriate behavior.