Independent Tiling Consultant needed

[Tile seller]

When I see grouting like that, I often wonder how they've managed to do it that badly.
Thats an awful job they've done and I can't see that anyone would be satisfied with it.

 

[Nick Jones]

yep, its rough.
Lazy grouting and no silicone to tidy-up the corners..

The silicone hadn't been done when I called a stop to it. From the instruction videos on YouTube there shouldn't be any grout in the joint between the wall and the floor, but it's full of it. He's not cleaned up in preparation for silicone, and his attitude seemed to be that the silicone would cover up any shortcomings. I paid Topps Tiles £ 3,000 for wall tiles, floor tiles, mosaic tiles adhesive, grout and sealant. Frankly I expect to see value to the tune of that £ 3,000 plus professional finishing. If I wanted a poor, I could have done it myself (although I believe the result would have been superior, even though it would have taken longer).

 

[Nick Jones]

It's not just that I'm not happy with the result - the contractor thinks he's done a good job.

 

[macten]

Was he grouting in the dark or something?!

 

[peteablard]

Whilst it's not great and far from acceptable we've certainly seen a lot worse on here. A decent tiler could sort a lot of those problems out in a couple of hours either re grouting or with silicone.

 

[Nick Jones]

It's not just the grouting. It is appalling, but I don't rate the tiling either. There are 2 sections of mosaic wall in the shower area. There are lots of "out of register" sections of mosaic. They aren't in line - some are out of alignment horizontally, some vertically. I've spotted several tiles with chips out of them - both wall tiles and floor tiles. I think it needs to be ripped out and re-done. I had drawn up the "design", selected the colour scheme on the Topps Tile visualiser, and this contractor has ruined it. I am bitterly disappointed with what he has done. It is unforgiveable.

 

[Bill]

Mosaic sheets, in their construction, are sometimes misaligned when being formed by the manufacturer - are you going to complain to them too?

 

[Nick Jones]

They were misaligned because the joints are of different sizes. This contractor said that you don't use spacers when laying mosaic tiles, which is completely the opposite of what the educational videos on You Tube show. So I am not going to complain to the manufacturers because it is not a manufacturing fault but a tiling contractors installation fault. Inspection of the photographs would show you the varying joint widths where the mosaic pattern goes out of register and it is because the joint widths were different that the "out of register" occurred. This "out of registration" effect occurs both horizontally and vertically because the contractor didn't lay the mosaic sheets properly. A little time and care on his part would have worked wonders - but he completely miscalculated the time that he was going to need to do the job - and because he had another job scheduled (not a tiling job) he rushed it. Also, the fact is that I do not believe he had done any tiling for several years because he had been employed in fitting fitted furniture in school, laboratories, etc and so when he came to do my job (both building work and then the tiling) he was "rusty" - and that is being extremely kind to him. I was not aware that he was going to do the tiling - I thought that he was going to hire a tiling professional (just as he hired plumbers and an electrician).

 

[Bill]

You make a lot of assumptions there^

 

[Bill]

I have never used spacers on mosaics ... ever.