Fine, go with the simple solution first, but let me ask you this... where's the fun in that?!? ;-p Seriously though, I may have over-analyzed it just a tad. My father was a brick mason and I've seen lots of concrete jobs that looked like that a couple months/years later because crews didn't clean up their mess properly and whatnot. The worst I've ever seen was an entire cement pavement up to a house that was just graded over when the entrance to the house was remodeled from a small porch landing to a very large "country porch" wrap-around style porch...and then sodded over. There was always a perfect strip down this guy's lawn where the grass would die every other year. Apparently grass cannot grow when it's simply four inches of soil on top of concrete... go figure :shrug: ;-p

Not only is it low but the tile itself is uneven. From the picture looks like very slight lipage. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to get the grout as high as possible with with tile that’s not rectified tile. Rectified tile means if you place a tile side by side there will not be a gap between them. With non rectified tile like yours and the amount of a grout line gap you chose or someone did it’s hard to get a high grout line. That pic looks standard practice Better quality tile would have helped your lipage and low grout line. Did you tell the contractor you wanted high or even with tile grout line? It’s not uncommon to have grout lines like this because there is a cleaning process. You can add more grout to the grout lines might cost you a days labor charge from most contractors.

It's normal, they'll go wherever is good for them / flee wherever is bad. In this case, it's probably a desire for privacy - who wants a bunch of vermicomposters looking in?

If I were you, I'd assume that you paid for it so I'd call him and tell him you'd like it back. You can approach it with him that you want it in case you need to do any repairs. He was wrong in not asking if you wanted it disposed of or not. And the other thing is that cedar (as with all wood) right now is extremely expensive so I doubt he just threw it away. Give him a call and then hide that extra cedar when you get it so it doesn't disappear on its own.