Really 4.5/5 stars. Having lived with the original builder grade bath for close to 40 years, I…read moredecided it was time to start preparing to "age in place" and get my master bath completely redone - shower conversion, floor tile, cabinets, new toilet, wallpaper removal and painting. This was my first major remodel, so I don't really have anything to compare with. The nits I experienced were pretty minor and probably typical for a job this scale. I found Jose thru Yelp after verifying his other reviews were from real people and not AI generated.
I had initially gotten quotes from several of the bathroom remodelers that advertise on TV and experienced sticker shock. One of them turned out to do only the wet area - I would have had to get someone else for the floors, cabinets, painting, etc. Their quote for just the shower area ended up being about what I paid Jose for the entire job. Another of the TV advertisers could do everything I wanted, but their quote was almost 3x what Jose quoted! Yes, they could do it in 2-3 days, but is that worth 3x the cost?
One of the first nits I experienced was that Jose didn't tell me the whole master bedroom would be sealed off during the project. Not that big a deal, but I wish I'd known that in advance. They got the demo completed the first day. One of the more time-consuming parts was removing the old wallpaper, which seemed to take about 2 days (the old walls were completely papered).
His crew foreman Javier is a master craftsman. I learned pretty quickly to trust his experience. When I had initially seen the tile backer boards installed for the shower, I thought they had forgotten the niche shelf I'd requested. He explained that goes in last.
One of the other nits I experienced was that I had to buy a lot of the supplies myself. I would have much preferred just pointing to stuff in a catalog, and Jose go buy them. The biggest problem with that was the grout. I trusted the tile shop's recommendation on grout, and when I delivered it to Javier, he said that stuff is no good. He explained that since it has silicone, it constantly outgasses and leaves a film on the tile. I went online and saw some other reviews with the same comments, so that reinforced my decision to trust what he was doing. Similar experience with the safety grab bars. I just bought some from Amazon, which came with cheap nylon screw locks. Seemed pretty flimsy should you have to actually use them to prevent a fall. Javier was able to use drywall anchors to securely lock them in place.
The last nit was the cabinet installation. They were in such a rush to finish the cabinets that the toilet hadn't even been installed. Since I switched to an elongated ADA style toilet, it turned out the medicine cabinet above the toilet could no longer be reached at the old one's height. They had to come back and lower it 4 inches. Again, an easy correction, but would have been unnecessary if they had put the new toilet in first.
Jose's crew finished up in 2 weeks, but it was another week before the glass shower doors and mirror showed up to be installed. Anyway, they finally went in today, and I am very happy with the end results. My neighbor had his bath redone last year, and comparing Jose's work to my neighbor's handyman, Jose is miles ahead. I finally know what "Schluter" is. My neighbor doesn't have it, so there are sharp tile edges everywhere!
Jose Robles Remodeling will definitely be in the running to do my other 2 bathrooms.