Rossano Tagliaferri – Tile and Stone installation

Summary: Excellent tile installation, reasonable people who fix mistakes and want to do a good job, seemingly standard prices, somewhat flakey scheduling. Overall I would recommend Mr. Tagliaferri & his crew, but just be sure to write your contract with proper deadlines.
The place I bought my tile (Galleria Tile, in SF) recommended Mr. Tagliaferri to my contractor. I was getting the floor and four walls tiled in my bathroom. (It’s a ~5′-6″ x 9′ bathroom, your basic normal size, with one partial wall where the shower is. Nothing too fancy.)
The original bid was for around $ 4,200 with a time estimate of 4 — 5 days. My contractor later told me that he was a little surprised that the bid was that low.
Overall they were a bit flaky. They started a few days late. They worked for a couple of days. Then they apparently decided not to show up. And on and off for another 5 weeks. It may have taken them 4 or 5 days total, but what they didn’t specify — and what I didn’t get in my contract — was the timespan in which they would finish.
However, they did a really nice job: very even lines, even spacing etc., and they went to extra effort to straighten out some of the glass tiles that had been mounted crookedly on their backing. Mr. Tagliaferri & his crew were pleasant and didn’t come across as psychos; they proved responsible and willing to make things right with the project.
They did make a couple of mistakes (which they promptly fixed when asked). I was there the day they asked me for the shower valve trim so they could make sure they had enough tile to cover the gap. I personally handed them my fixtures. Three days later my contractor said he had to call them back to fix the tile because they had left too much of a gap. I know that everyone makes mistakes, but what a weird mistake to make, given that I had personally handed them the faucets. It’s not like there wasn’t enough tile — I still have a box and a half left.
Anyway, this should have been a 15 minute fix. I could have done it in about that much time; all they had to do was pop on a couple of little 1″ x 1″ tiles. That was two weeks ago and they just today fixed it.
I did make a big change halfway through the project. They installed Tile A on the floors and part of the walls. Originally I was supposed to have a 3′ stripe of Tile B, then more Tile A up to the ceiling. However, they had done two walls of Tile B when I saw it, and the tile was horrifically ugly. Revoltingly ugly. Totally didn’t match. (Fortunately, I had paid a designer good money to prevent such mistakes from happening, and my money was totally wasted. Yay!) I had Mr. Tagliaferri rip down that tile and about 24 sq ft of Tile A in the shower, returned Tile B, and got Tile C to put in the shower. This was no fault of Mr. Tagliaferri; it was totally my aesthetic decision. The upshot is that I did change the plan and they had to redo some work: They took about 2 – 4 hours to pull down the tile, and since it had only taken them about a day to put it up, I’ll assume it would take about that much extra work to replace it. So yes, that extra couple of days was my fault and I agree that it was my responsibility to pay them more money to cover the extra work.
When they sent the bill, they added an extra $ 2,000, which increased the price of the job by 50%. It was a bit high, I thought, given how much time it did take them to finish. My contractor was able to talk them down a little bit, which I’m happy about. I couldn’t believe that they were trying to charge that much extra, especially given how long it took them to totally finish my job.
Apparently the flakiness is acceptable in the construction industry, but I’m sick of that attitude. Construction and remodeling are SO expensive… and this is my home. When it’s ripped apart I’m totally dependent on other people to make it livable again. The constant not knowing is the worst. I don’t care about a couple of days here or there, or a missed phone call. But when you tell someone one week and that turns into five weeks? Yuck. Really awful.
My advice, as with all home /​construction projects:
(1) have the contractor give you their completion date. For every (x) time over that date, they pay a penalty /​lose money. [For every (x) time early, they get extra money.]
(2) Use an escrow service for payment.
(3) fully specify all details up front and make them part of the contract.
Overall, again, I’d recommend Mr. Tagliaferri’s company. They did great work and even though there were scheduling problems, he made things good in the end without giving me a lot of grief.