I had to let Steven M. Kaufman (SMK) of Quality Tile (located in Manalapan, NJ) go out of my house in the first day he started to work on our master bathroom project in March 2021. The demo on the bathroom was already completed down to the wooden frames and I hired him to do the rest in order to have a proper jet-tub surrounding and shower enclosure ready for installation of the frameless glass shower panels and door we would later have.
SMK showed extremely poor performance on how to lay mosaic tiles on shower floor, how to cut and install cement boards on shower walls, and how to water proof shower walls/floor in order to prevent any possibility of shower leaks through tile work. Not to mention, he put health and safety of his customers in jeopardy. I explained the No-No's he conducted in the first day he started the work on the project in details in a future paragraph below.
In summary, I would not recommend SMK to anybody who needs tile work to be done on their bathrooms.
Here are some of the No-No's Steven had done in the first day of his work:
1- He originally said he would build a thickness of a mortar mud-bed over the fiberglass shower base but he later switched saying that he does not need to do it since the base already had the pre-slope and he would just install the mosaic tiles with a thin-set over fiberglass shower base. He tried to lay all the mosaic tiles (12X12 inches sheets of 2X2 inches square tiles) on about 1 inch thick layer of thin-set using a half inch square trowel with the thin-set clogging all the weep holes on the flange of the Oatey adjustable shower drain. The tiling work was horrendous with unevenly laid mosaics creating hills and valleys at multiple locations. The sharp side edges of the mosaics were protruding out at those locations and creating safety hazard. TCNA handbook for installing ceramic tiles shows that a mud-bed is laid under the tiles and over initial pre-sloped mortar layer with usage of stiffener mesh at the mid-thickness.
2- He used 0.42 inches HardieBacker cement boards on the 2X4 wood frame where I had adjacent sheetrock panels with 0.5 inches plus thickness. Result was steps all around the border seams which was the invitation for leveling problems for the overlapping tiles.
3- He allowed his helper Joe (wearing a simple N95 type dust mask) cut the cement boards using a cutter wheel. Although the work was done in my garage, there was a thick, toxic layer of dust everywhere in the house. I learned it after the fact from JamesHardie's website that you must not use cutter wheel since the dust consist of 40-50% Crystalline Silica which is a carcinogen when inhaled which is almost impossible to avoid unless a suitable respirator is used.
4- He has no concept of water proofing a shower other than directing you to to work with a Fiberglass company to seal the shower base with fiberglass layers which he ruins later on by screwing the cement boards within 2 inches of the shower floor.
5- He thinks that HardieBacker cement boards are waterproof. He butts them to shower base which could potentially suck any water or moisture that could get behind the tile, potentially creating breeding ground for mold and bacteria for months to come.
6- He was very lousy installing the cement boards leaving about half inches of gap in some areas. No leveling of the boards whatsoever, just screws them on the frames. My other installer who took the job over noticed that one of the cement boards was more than half inches out of level.
7- Instead of a 2 in wide high-strength alkali-resistant glass fiber tape, he used the 3M white duct tape I had laying around on some of the cement board seams while he used mixed, leftover acrylic/silicon caulks he had on the others.
Please don't be, in his words, one of the "bad apple" client of him. Please don't do the mistake of hiring him like we did. read more
