I'm at the tail end of remodeling my bathroom and laundry room. Basic stuffs - new cabinet, bathtub, wall tiles and heated tile floor. We've been quite worried because anytime we brought up any issues, the contractor would just brush us off saying he would do it or he knows what to do. The tile guy has been helpful and willing to fix issues identified but the contractor is mad at him for taking too long. He's rushing the tile guy from day one to finish the job asap so things have been stressful. Today, the tile guy was here to do final clean up and he spilled the beans. He said the tile job was so hard because the contractor (his boss) never prep the surface and took many shortcuts.

These are the few things he pointed out/we noticed:

1. They used regular drywall tape instead of special fiberglass tape for waterproofing.

2. There are gaps in the corners between the hardie backer – redgard wasn’t able to cover this gap.

3. Hardie backer not flat due to no shimming behind – some spots have ¼” thick thinset to make it level.

5. Tub was installed with the flange outside the hardie backer, instead of flush or behind. He put meshtape and thinset to cover the gap. Tiler said when the thinset fails, water will go in. The tub is also not installed flat so grout is thicker on one side of the tub to accommodate that.

6. The toilet is right next to the tub so we had them tile the whole entire wall. He put hardie backer on the tub wall but just patched up the drywall on the toilet side. That drywall was not flat so now the tile wall has a very obvious bow, at least 1 inch difference. The tiler had to use very thick thinset just to install the tiles but it still look bad.

7. New tub was chipped - possibly from soldering. Fixed with compound. Not sure whether tub will rust, it's Americast.

8. Did not smooth out the concrete for the heating components. Some parts are sticking out and clearly visible and made tiling difficult.

The way the tiler puts it, I might have 2 or 3 years before the tub will fail, as in water gets in. I'm out a lot of money for the materials and already paid 70% labor to the contractor. I'm having severe buyers remorse because my bathroom was in great condition before sigh.

Am I right to be concerned? Are these issues severe enough to fire the contractor? I do not have confidence that the contractor could fix the issues because most of those issues were caught earlier but he chose to ignore us.