Handyman Warriors

Amanda R.

Joe is a decent electrician and plumber, but terrible at tile. We initially hired him to do the plumbing for a bathroom remodel. He did well with that and was very persistent about getting hired to do the electrical, drywall, paint, and tile as well. Even though we had a good tile guy lined up, we thought it would be faster to have one person do everything. Big mistake! He said it would take a week or week and half to do everything. Well once we hired him and gave him more money, he suddenly needed more time to get the tile, then he had other warranty work to do the days he was supposed to show up at our house. When he did finally show up with the tile, he said they didn't make bullnose pieces for the shower (which isn't true, our original tile guy was going to get them/make them), so I told him to get them from Halo Tile.

The days he did show up he was so SLOW it was shocking. He kept saying that he was slow because he did ""quality"" work, but I never saw any kind of quality in his tile work. Then he installed wooden baseboards, even though he quoted us for tile baseboards. When I noticed and said something, he said the walls were uneven, so tile would look bad. I told him to install the tile baseboards like we had agreed, and he told me he would, but if it looked bad, he would charge me extra to take them out. I'm not sure why I would get charged for his lack of skill and experience, but that is how he runs his business apparently. Everyday he would leave a horrible mess, and by the end of the third week, he STILL wasn't done. Every time I spoke with him the timeline would change, and he would claim he told my husband or father-in-law about it (which wasn't true). He tried to put us off until the next week, but I said, no, you need to come on Saturday and finish. He said he could only come at 5am (hoping I would say nevermind), so I agreed just to finally have it done. He finally finished and the tiles are very uneven, the grout is uneven, the mosaic band around the shower is wavy, he cracked the wall when he removed the wooden baseboards that he should have never put in and didn't even bother patching it, and he chipped one of the tiles next to the toilet and never told us. He also kept our tile samples that we paid for.

Bottom line: he charged as much as a real tile person, but was ridiculously slow and unskilled. He had excuses for everything and the ""discount"" he was supposed to give us, he didn't (it was our fault for not getting it in writing first). He did eventually finish though, which why I gave him 2 stars instead of one.

Mike K.

Called Joe on 5/20 and asked about him installing some drywall for me. He told me that he could probably come by later in the day, around 4:00 p.m. He didn't call or stop by but called the next day and explained that his cell phone died. No problem, said he could come by on 5/21 to give a quote. Came by, did his evaluation and said I would have a quote that night. Never received the quote so I called the following week and left a message, explaining that I need the quote if he wants to do the job. Didn't receive a call back.

Joe was respectful and polite but I guess this is his busy season so if it is not a job that is a priority for him he will not devote the time to it. I have found this a common problem when contacting contractors/handymen. There is a lot of work out there so they are picking and choosing what they want to do. At least this guy called back. I have called about 5-6 drywall installers and only 2 have called back, Joe being one of them.