We had used Walker and Sons for some basic plumbing work and they'd done a good job. So, about two years ago, when we needed a shower replaced we called them. Huge mistake. At first things were going well, but then they apparently got a big job redoing a bunch of bathrooms at a hotel. They didn't have time for our little job. It got harder and harder to get them back to our place to work. Then, they changed the subcontractors who were doing part of the project to some people who were really, really bad. For instance, when they were installing tile along an edge, instead of cutting the tile to fit, they put in a variety of large pieces, then came in with a saws-all and tried to cut the tile off in a straight line along the edge. Horrible work. The project stretched on weeks longer than it should have. Once it was finally finished, the work was sloppy but everything seemed to work and we really wanted to get rid of these people. About a week later, the tiles in front of the shower door started moving when you stepped on them and the grout between them cracked. Walker said that that bad subcontractor must have done something wrong and that he'd come out and fix it himself. We'd have rather had a tile person do it, but fine. Fix it please. It turns out the floor tile was installed fine but that Walker had put the subflooring down wrong. It wasn't attached well enough to the beams below and was moving up and down. He fixed that and redid the tile. Unfortunately, with several gaps in time when he went to work on other projects. During one of the periods of several days when he was away, I noticed a smell in the bathroom. I lifted the lid of the toilet, which was up and out of place while the tile work was being done. Walker had peed into the disconnected toilet and the urine had been fermenting in there for three days. When he came back and tried to put the toilet into place, he ended up dumping the fermented urine around the pipe and on the floor. We didn't know this at first, we just saw him RUN out of the house and drive away. A few minutes later, we started to smell something horrible. I walked into our first floor bathroom and the fermented urine was coming down through the open ceiling (open due to long delayed and ongoing work on those pipes) in a disgusting waterfall. I called Walker's office. The woman who answered seemed shocked and promised to make this right. They came out and cleaned both bathrooms and the work was finally finished. It was sloppy, but it was done.
So, why am I writing a review about 2 years later. Well, we just discovered that the work was worse than sloppy and urine soaked. The grout around the lowest line of tiles in the shower, where they meet the base, kept turning black. We tried mold killer. We tried resealing the grout line. The black kept coming back. Finally, we called a tile expert to see what the problem is. Turns out that Walker installed the wrong shower base. He put in on meant for a shower with three tile walls and a door, rather than two tile walls, a glass wall, and a door. This means that the glass wall wasn't long enough to reach down to the base like the door wall does. So, Walker stuck a wooden block under there to support the one corner and a strip of metal (which was covered on the outside by those tiles that had been cut by the saws-all, coincidentally) and didn't bother to adequately seal the 1+ inch gap between the bottom of the glass wall and the base. For two years, water has been splashing under there and seeping into the wall behind the tile. Mold is growing in the wall behind the tile. Black mold. We're going to have to pay a competent company to pull out this shower and tile and have it done right.
Don't patronize Walker. If you MUST, just have him do basic plumbing work. Don't trust him or his subcontractors with more than that. read more