J R Brown Interiors in Bristol

I'll give this company 1 star (simply for just turning up to do the quote). It is actually 1 man (or more accurately cowboy) on his own, Jamie Brown, and when he turned up to quote us for a new Bathroom and Kitchen it all seemed very professional. We decided to proceed with the quote, but sadly the professionalism stopped there. He turned up on the first day and started ripping out our old Bathroom - he had NO safety gloves or goggles and ended up cutting his hand on a very sharp tile; this resulted in him needing to go to Accident & Emergency to have fragments of the tile removed from his hand (I would have expected an experienced professional to at least wear gloves). When he did come back to carry on with the rip-out (still without safety gloves or goggles), the old Bathroom and rubbish was just dumped on our front lawn, fortunately my Father had a trailer so he was able to clear the rubbish away for us. When I said to Jamie about the mess, he said that it would cost extra to remove the rubbish (nothing mentioned in his quote that this would be the case, and Citizens Advice told us that it was perfectly acceptable for us to expect the rubbish to be removed by him). Once the old Bathroom was out, he first fitted our new bath which went in fine, and following this arranged for 'his' tiler to come and do the tiling; the first tiler he organised came for 1 day, then disappeared (never to be seen again), the 2nd guy he arranged came after a delay of a week and started tiling; we had prepared all of the walls and floor already so the tiling couldn't have been easier; well, after 2 dreadful attempts at tiling the wall, and a floor where the tiles sloped in the middle, we decided that we did not want this tiler back; Jamie advised us to sort our own tiler as he didn't have anyone else available (this was very annoying as we employed J R Brown Interiors to do the complete job as a project) - we didn't expect to have to source our own contractors. We were unfortunately stuck with the badly tiled floor as we had installed underfloor heating elements prior to the tiles being laid, and pulling the tiles up to relay would only have damaged the underfloor heating. Our own tiler was thankfully able to salvage most of our wall tiles and was able to make a half-decent job out of the mess he was confronted with. At this stage we had had enough, I had taken so much time off work to sort the problems left by Jamie, and it was hard to see any real progress being made as he often didn't turn up until about 11:30 in the morning, and was quite often gone by 3:30 - 4pm, not really leaving much time to do a proper days work. We felt enough was enough by this point; we had been through a terrible experience with this clearly unprofessional, inexperienced cowboy, and could no longer continue being without a bathroom for what was now nearly 2 months. We decided to terminate our agreement with Jamie and J R Brown Interiors. We had also already arranged for our new Kitchen to be supplied and installed by him once he had finished the Bathroom, but after this experience we said NO to him installing it, but agreed to pay him for the materials as he had measured and supplied these which we were happy with. Unfortunately, the nightmare didn't end there, as when our new Kitchen fitter started to install the Kitchen, he found that Jamie hadn't measured the Kitchen area correctly, meaning that our beautifully new Kitchen units had to be cut about to fit best they could. Now we are almost 6 months past this dreadful experience only to find that the Bathroom floor that J R Brown had laid is starting to lift and come loose. We called in our tiler, who had to take part of it up, and having been in the tiling business for many years, said to us that it was one of the worst laid floors he had ever come across (we knew it wasn't level anyway but he found that the mix and adhesive/grout used was not mixed and applied correctly). We are now left with the prospect of having to have the whole floor and underfloor heating taken up in the new year, and completely renewed and relaid.
This has been the most emotionally shattering, expensive experience me and my partner has ever been through in our new home. Please save yourself the stress and expense of experiencing these cowboys and choose someone else. I would hate for someone to go through what we have been through. We have the photos (and currently the badly laid floor) for anyone welcome to see, who may be considering employing J R Brown Interiors, or Jamie Brown himself trading as any other name.

Ok well after reading the above I felt I had to say a few words so here we go. I asked Face Book for recommendations as we needed a new kitchen fitted so a friend had used Jamie a couple of times for a kitchen, bathroom so had members of her family good enough I thought and gave Jamie a call, explained I am a nightmare for having stuff done as I hate the mess and upheaval etc. No problem, he is very patient, between him and buildbase we finally sorted what would be best for us, better to get it right in planning. So we were able to go away and leave him to it, yes there were problems, who knows what will be unearthed as things get ripped out but Jamie kept in touch and it was sorted, I asked in planning what happens to the rubbish and this was all sorted within the price of the job. Kitchen was fitted to a high standard on time, he even fed the fish and watered my flowers. Since then Jamie has completed our bathroom re fit to a high standard any niggles easily ironed out and we are now onto our next project outside this time. I have and would give his name to anyone who needed anything doing as he will give his best.