Sorry for the long post but any good tilers in the house?

I have just had some tiling done on bathroom refurb and I’m not happy about several things. I’d like to know if you think I’m being picky or if not, what can be done about it.

Floor: Honed slate 300×300 onto underfloor heating wires, 6mm hardibacker then floorboards.
None of the tiles are flush.
Grout lines range from 2 mm to almost 10 mm.
Quite a few tiles with chips in edges

Walls: Honed Travertine 400x200x10 onto 12mm hardibacker
Grout lines are good but the tiles aren’t flush to each other.
Some tiles have an excessive amount of filling and look obviously out of place.

I decided to pay someone else to do it because I wanted someone to do a much much better job than either I or my mate could do. I expected them to take the time to make it look really good. So flush tiles, consistent and straight grout lines, no cracks and visually looking stunning. Using natural products I expected and hoped for variation in colour but buying machine cut and honed tiles hoped for a uniform flat surface.

I told the tiler I wasn’t happy and gave my reasons. He agrees he shouldn’t have fitted some of the dodgy looking wall tiles and has offered to replace those.
His reasons for the flush and grout issues are that the materials are natural so I could only ever get the rustic effect. I kind of expected his experience and skill to make the floor as flat as possible. If there’s variation in thickness of the base then adjust the tile to be flat beacuse the top surface should be pretty much flat. The flushness of the tiles to each other feels far more severe than any variation in flatness. If there were tiles of the wrong size (one tile is 10mm out in each length) not to use them.

We didn’t agree with each other and we’re kind of wating for me to decide what to do. I’m tempted to get another tiler in to look at it for opinion on quality.

I’m not a tiler and can’t comment with regards to the tiling done in your house, or contribute anything useful other than saying it must be really gutty to have done work to your gaff and not be pleased with the outcome, and bump your thread back up to the top.

It sounds like a bad job, but I am no expert.

If you don’t get a response off here, try posting the question in the tiling section on http://www.diynot.com/forums/index.php There are some very helpful professional tilers on there. Post some pictures and you will probably get a better response.

Dunno if it is at all relevant, but we just had a kitchen floor done with 6 inch quarry tiles. They’re probably >100 years old, reclaimed from a bunch of old buildings, the tiles vary in size by 5 or 6 mm in all dimensions, laid onto a not quite perfect bitumen floor in a room with non square walls . There are some very slight variations in height, and a slight variation in grout width, but nothing like 2-10mm. Looks lovely it does.

Bugger of a job that was for the poor guy we paid to do it.

I’m sure ernie would agree a variation of 8mm is not acceptable in grout lines! Trav has been the bane of my life ever since I fitted it to my kitchen floor the filling of it has failed in a coupla places due to foot traffic I reckon! As for flushness thats a bit poor I would say, because the wall tiles aren’t exactly large, if they were 600×900 which we’ve just fitted on a job then I could understand!

Grout lines range from 2 mm to almost 10 mm.
Quite a few tiles with chips in edges

This is plain wrong, there shouldn’t be any chips and an 8mm difference is terrible, i do tiling for customers.

A good pic would help.

I am a pro tiler, 16 years experience…..

I would normally lay a slate with 8-10mm joints, 2mm is far, far too tight to allow for any differences in thickness on individual pieces.

The tiles should have been graded for thickness by the installer before laying commenced I lay them all out, clean and seal them then pick up and place in stacks- thick, medium-thick, medium, medium-thin and thin. then the laying should have started with the thick tiles and the thinner ones packed up with adhesive to match the thick ones.

You say underfloor heating cable was layed, was this screeded over with leveling compound before laying commenced? I would always do this as it makes packing and lining the tiles much easier, and easier means a better finish is often achieved. The wider joints is to allow some ramping of the grout to make the tiles flush to each other, they won’t be flat but there shouldn’t be excessive lipping.

As for the differences in size of tile, this is a supply issue. all tiles from a batch should be near as dammit the same size give or take a mm or 2, a near 8mm difference in size is not acceptable from a supply point of view and I would have refused to lay as the finish would never be acceptable.

Chips in edges? Slate is a natural product and features chips, ridges, splits etc. unless you specifically told the tiler not to use chipped ones and bought enough to scrap the ones that didn’t conform then I’m afraid it’s pretty much your fault, sorry.

Trav

A flush finish should be easy enough to attain as trav is gererally pretty flat. again though for the filled ones, uless you bought an excess and told the tiler not to use the bad ones then it’s up to you as the supplier.

BS. I need a tiler. Where are you based?

Leicestershire

Meh.

Sorry!

Blazin Saddles pretty much has it…

Can you post a pic? I’d love to see…

Everything blazing saddles said.

Sounds like an inexperienced tiler really, should have prepped properly and then informed you about the materials. I’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve argued with customers who’ve bought cheap materials and i’ve told them to expect a crap job if they won’t return them. Buy cheap, pay twice. It’s not what you want to hear, but it sounds to me like bargain tiles, or B&Q!

Harry, I’m near manchester 🙂

Thanks STW’s.

Blazing Saddles – thanks for your insight. You describe the preparation (re the thickness and getting floor level) I expected but that was missed out by my tiler. He admitted to me pretty much he just laid the tiles as they came from the pack without any checks on thickness or even look. I was a short one slate for the floor – he phoned me up to let me know so he could get another one but never mentioned the product being out of tolerance.

He said he was planning to put a screed down first for the undefloor heating – don’t know if that happened.

Also, I see what you say with slate being a nutural product to expect variations but wouldn’t the fact I’ve chosen honed tiles thats meant to take out the variation in surface mean that any chips would stand out and look unsightly?

As for materials – slates was from Topps and Travertine from Travertine Direct. Don’t know how these compare to others for quality…. Certainly wasn’t expecting to but twice!

Pictures are a work in progress…..

He was always going to struggle if he just pulled them out of a box and laid them, the grading of them is almost as important as the fitting, this reduced the lipping to minimal. I personally discard the rough looking/worst pieces or use them for cuts where they’re not seen much.

As for the honed tiles, they will be better than rustic but still can have chipping to the edges as slate is a very soft material. Topps tiles don’t have a fantastic reputation in the pro tiling world, their tiles are quite often out of tolerance, even the ceramic and porcelain, I suspect a lot of it may be 2nd qualities from manufacturers.

8mm between pieces is not on, but unfortunately you haven’t got much of a case anymore as nearly all tile boxes have a statement to the effect of “once you’ve stuck them down, tough titties” your tiler has accepted the tiles as being ok by fixing them.

A photo of the job is going to help make an assessment as to the std of workmanship, but it sounds to me like an inexperienced tiler taking on a job above his abilities, grading of stone and sealing beforehand is one of the 1st things I was taught, every job is a learning experience even now having fitted i would guess over 10,000m2 of slate over the years…

Hi,

Images as promised:

Not bad from a distance…..

but on closer inspection dissimilar grout lines….

and on other side of tile….

And grout run showing rustic effect.

Tiler says he has 16 years experience. Didn’t feel like he used any of it.

Images as promised:

Not bad from a distance…..

but on closer inspection dissimilar grout lines….

and on other side of tile….

And grout run showing rustic effect.

FTFY

Ok, that really is disgraceful, it looks like a crappy diy job from that shot.

Whats the parallel grout line like, it should be the opposite. If it’s straight, then the problem is with the tiles

Is that a pound shop spirit level?

Hmmmm, are the tiles even square? measure the tile diagonally both ways, is the measurement the same? this would be a point to moan at the supplier with. Having said that, it is NOT a top quality job. doesn’t look that bad from a lipping point of view but the spacing is pretty bad and the tiler should have been aware that it looked awful and shouldn’t have carried on without talking to you 1st. setting out a room that size isn’t rocket science and the tight joints could have been easily rectified as he went along.

Now, not sure exactly what to suggest from here as pulling up any of the tiles will almost certainly wreck the underfloor heating mat, I guess you could negotiate a discount for the fitting and take it as an experience, depends if you can live with it or not? I’d not be happy to pay for a job like that tbh. You could moan at Topps for the calibration of the tiles but as I said before I think they will fire you off as they have already been laid….

funky is on the same wave length as me I think, just typing faster!

I thought exactly the same re the level! I keep a close eye on anyone (even sparks) who turn up with levels like that 😆

ebygomm – ta very much – i’d only ever inserted one or two pics before and couldn’t remember how to do it. What did i do wrong?

FM – It’s a Stanley plastic spirit level I’ll have you know! I’ll check the parallel line once I’ve taken the plastic paint sheets of.

BS – Your last point, would have been bloody useful to have a tiler on the ball who’d notice it wasn’t right along the way and not several days after!

Measured pairs of diagonals for three tiles at random (not with the plastic spirit level but a metal metre rule!) and they’re within a mm of each other so we can be reasonably confident they’re square.

Lipping – is that the tilers term for tiles being flush with one another?

It’s my own amateur level – 8 years it’s done me good. Better make sure my inflatable hammer and acme saw aren’t in any further photos!

😀

it looks like he hadn’t set out first properly, just pulled them out of the box and started laying them.

Yes, lipping is how flush the tiles are to one another, usually with slate if you get them pretty well matched you can use the grout to blend the two edges together.

looking at the way the joints aren’t paralell it looks to be more of a setting out error than the tiles being out of calibration. poor job.