Supervisors not pleased with kitchen floor redo

MARENGO — After having the subcontractor sand off and reapply epoxy to the floor in the kitchen jail, Iowa County supervisors are still unhappy with the quality of the work.

Supervisors visited the jail kitchen in twos Friday to avoid violating open meeting laws.

Supervisors paid $5,900 for an upgrade to the jail floor during its kitchen renovation, said Supervisor Abigail Maas following last week’s board meeting. The renovation of the jail and engineering office was a controversial project from the beginning.

Iowa County Building Maintenance Supervisor Dylan Healey said the floor was done two or three weeks ago by subcontractor Artistic Concrete, “and it was a hack.”

The county asked the contractor to sand the floor to the bare concrete and reapply the epoxy.

Maas and Supervisor Jonathan Degen examined the new floor, noting areas that showed drips and bumps. “The workmanship is shoddy,” Maas said. “I self-level all the time. It looks better than this.”

In some places the floor looked as if the contractor hadn’t sanded it down as far as he should have, said Degen.

Healey noted that the concrete’s not completely level and that the floor looks pretty good in large flat areas but is not smooth “as we start getting closer to the sides and the doorways.”

The county could put rugs down by the doorways, said Degen.

“On quality, honestly, it’s a C,” said Todd Johnson, of Garling Construction, contractor for the remodel.

“They have done some good work,” Johnson said of Artistic Concrete. And the industry is seeing a huge shortage of labor.

“I think we need to ask for a reduction in cost if we’re going to keep it,” said Maas.

The floor has to be approved before the kitchen equipment can be moved in. Once the equipment is installed, the floor can’t be redone, said Healey. Contractors are “pushing to be done by the end of the month,” he said.

A separate construction project – tuckpointing and putting windows in the Iowa County courthouse is at a standstill, said Healey.

CR Glass installed the colored glass last week, and the county is now waiting for more windows. Healey doesn’t expect them until the end of October or the first of November, he told supervisors.