problem with marble tiles

[jonnyc]

I am posting this in the arms instead of stone forum as i do not want the supplier of marble to pick up this thread.
long story short, my client chose a bianco crystal marble from turkey 900 x 900 x 20 from a supplier i know.
i did not want to get invloved with supply .
price seemed fantastic.
over 300 sq mts supplied plus oversized pieces for double staircase and landing edges to be finished here.
tiles in themselves ie colour variation are ok.
problem is that the edges have alot of chips.
I advised the supplier as soon as we started taking out .
we spent two man days sorting the crates in to what i deemed acceptable or not for first 100 sq mts and came out with 70% being ok to lay as whole good tiles.
we subsequently laid 100 sq mts in kitchen but when grouted the joints have a general ragged nail tear for want of better word.
just looks very poor

 

[jonnyc]

what happened when grouting even though we did double swiss grout and got joints flush is that the nail tear in marble was far more evident after grouting than before.
i believe the nail tear is caused by the mica popping out of marble when it is cut and indeed this is apparent on face as well.
i guess this is a question for marble experts and pebbs is one i would like to seek opinion from.
my feeling now is that the product was very cheap which was great but ultimately you get what you pay for to some degree.
in my view the only way to save this consigment is to have stone recut to say 890 x 890 and this is possible as i have only one centre line joint to other areas

 

[jonnyc]

sorry . i get fed up with losing long posts hence reposting.butleading to my main question, what is acceptable and what is not it terms of quality of stone.the tiles 900x 900 are not perfect and you cant bang them together with a 2mm spacer .no problem we are used to that.i think they are well within the realms of being acceptable in square.but i really dont know what is deemed to be acceptable on tile edges.i post a couple of pictures below that show the bigger chips but i think it is in the nature of this marble that even with a straight cut the mica just falls out. is this accpetable or not. it does not look good to me

- - - Updated - - -

sorry . i get fed up with losing long posts hence reposting.
butleading to my main question, what is acceptable and what is not it terms of quality of stone.
the tiles 900x 900 are not perfect and you cant bang them together with a 2mm spacer .
no problem we are used to that.i think they are well within the realms of being acceptable in square.
but i really dont know what is deemed to be acceptable on tile edges.
i post a couple of pictures below that show the bigger chips but i think it is in the nature of this marble that even with a straight cut the mica just falls out. is this accpetable or not. it does not look good to me

 

[Rossymcg]

What does the client think?

 

[jonnyc]

Client does not really know what is acceptable or not.
but I laid out 40 tiles for inspection and showed the spectrum of colour and edge detail supplied.
Not sure if I am being too picky about chips .

 

[Tony73]

would be to big chips for me. Did tiles came to site like this? sharp edge should be taken off, when cut. (before delivery)

 

[Sean SML Tiling]

What colour grout will you be using jonny?

 

[jonnyc]

What colour grout will you be using jonny?

already grouted the 100 sq mts .
i always mix my own colours to suit any stone/marble I fix.
dry mix even proportion
6 parts ardex fs brilliant white .
i part fs dove grey.

 

[jonnyc]

would be to big chips for me. Did tiles came to site like this? sharp edge should be taken off, when cut. (before delivery)

Photos show the chips I deem unacceptable .
i will show you more pics of marble that looked good when laid but pretty naff when grouted.

 

[Tony73]

I did same stone 2 years ago, from turkey- same problem. And some of them was up to 7mm out of square (600x600x20 tiles) :mad2:

 

[Colour Republic]

That's poor!

I wouldn't accept it.

Personally if its micro-chipping and you need to be closer than 1 foot away to notice I'd maybe accept it on a floor, but that looks like you'd see it clearly from 4 or 5 foot away.

Put it this way, if you were doing a cut and the edge ended up like that, would you fix it or do it again? I'm fairly sure I know what your answer would be!

 

[jonnyc]

That's poor!

I wouldn't accept it.

Personally if its micro-chipping and you need to be closer than 1 foot away to notice I'd maybe accept it on a floor, but that looks like you'd see it clearly from 4 or 5 foot away.

Put it this way, if you were doing a cut and the edge ended up like that, would you fix it or do it again? I'm fairly sure I know what your answer would be!

I would not disagree with first point.
things are never so simple.
But what would you do if your client had disregarded a very good stone and decided to find their own .
You had no input on what was chosen or even seen a sample.
you then get a delivery.
labour value of contract worth about 25k inc stair cases and atrium .
i only have employees so I have booked off 5 odd weeks for this job.
do I support my client who has bought what he thought was a good product at amazing price and say this is not acceptable or fix what he has chosen.if I say product that he chose no good then i am 4k out of pocket per week of lost time!!!

 

[Tony73]

not easy some times jonnyc, t I would show the problem to the client, when stone delivered , and offer to recut on site (hour rate) , as you mentioned from 900x900 to 890x890

 

[Colour Republic]

I would not disagree with first point.
things are never so simple.
But what would you do if your client had disregarded a very good stone and decided to find their own .
You had no input on what was chosen or even seen a sample.
you then get a delivery.
labour value of contract worth about 25k inc stair cases and atrium .
i only have employees so I have booked off 5 odd weeks for this job.
do I support my client who has bought what he thought was a good product at amazing price and say this is not acceptable or fix what he has chosen.if I say product that he chose no good then i am 4k out of pocket per week of lost time!!!

That is really only a question you can answer.

I may be wrong here but i'm going to assume you charge more than your average tiler? I'm sure some of those extra charges are down to the specialist nature of much of your work but i'm also going to assume some of your price is based on the level of service you offer your clients. As such sometimes you have to swallow things aren't going to go smoothly and it will hit you in the pocket even when you aren't at fault.

To me that's just the nature of the beast when dealing with that end of the market.

Where you go from here is anyones guess, either you invoice for some lost time (You'd have to have a contract in place to do that) or you re-cut all the stone and charge accordingly. One things for sure you can't lay much of that stone so either you walk away, re-cut it or get Turkey to express ship replacement stone.

I supply maybe 99% of the materials for the projects I do, I need to be in charge of quality control, so if anything does go wrong (and it always will from time to time) It is me in the driving seat to sort it out and not a third party to complicate matters.

I think the most cost effective solution for you is the customer accepts responsibility for the quality of the stone and pays extra for you to re-finish it. But guessing you already know that!

 

[thompsonbrown]

Had a similar job with Turkish marble.
Customer ordered Carrara Bianco marble tiles for there bathroom. knew very little about marble back then, and looked ok to me.
Had a lot of white filler and glittery crystals which chipped when cut. never fitted marble before thought this was normal.
Only noticed how bad the edges looked once they were grouted. but customer was over the moon with them.
Installed there en-suit about a year later and the bathroom looked a mess. all the tiles had yellowed
Customer still was quite happy with them (god knows how?)
looked online why tiles had yellowed and found out that Carrara Bianco marble only comes from Italy and that these were cheap knock-offs.
Your Tiles seem similar to the ones I used so I wouldn't expect a great finish if you re-cut.
And seeing the tiles I fitted a year later put me off ever using Turkish Marble again.

 

[Pebbs]

Aww Jonny, you and me both know that if its a price that is to good to be true, its for a reason, they are churning the material out, dont pay any attention to chip edges, pack it badly its already fragile and if it wasn't chipped when it left it for certainly will be when you unpack it at this end. Jonny is there any way you can open up the joints at all? I think your probably going to tell me no as by the sounds of it your already to far down the line. How good is your making good? Listen ring me if you need to and we can go through the options. Dont be beating yourself up about it, because you flagged the problem up and you were told to proceed, and theres always a remedy to these kind of problems.

Chin up, I'll give you a hand dont be worrying.

Pebbs

 

[jonnyc]

I have already opened up the joints where some tiles were bit oversized. That went ok .By getting joints full they appear about 3mm plus instead of the 2mm but look ragged.this really was a bit of a surprise.
have sent a bit of 30mm off to a mason yard as I don't fancy bull nosing myself on site now.
if they can't get a good finish then there's a real problem. I'll take a few photos this afternoon and see what you think.
material is honed

 

[jonnyc]

Had a similar job with Turkish marble.
Customer ordered Carrara Bianco marble tiles for there bathroom. knew very little about marble back then, and looked ok to me.
Had a lot of white filler and glittery crystals which chipped when cut. never fitted marble before thought this was normal.
Only noticed how bad the edges looked once they were grouted. but customer was over the moon with them.
Installed there en-suit about a year later and the bathroom looked a mess. all the tiles had yellowed
Customer still was quite happy with them (god knows how?)
looked online why tiles had yellowed and found out that Carrara Bianco marble only comes from Italy and that these were cheap knock-offs.
Your Tiles seem similar to the ones I used so I wouldn't expect a great finish if you re-cut.
And seeing the tiles I fitted a year later put me off ever using Turkish Marble again.

Sounds like you had similar experience to me. What company did your marble come from.i think my supplier sells this product to other companies in uk

 

[jonnyc]

not easy some times jonnyc, t I would show the problem to the client, when stone delivered , and offer to recut on site (hour rate) , as you mentioned from 900x900 to 890x890

Too big to cut perfect square on site even with my nice new prime saw and table.

 

[charlie1]

I see your predicament Jonny. Your dealing with tolerances I bet the customer wouldn't even notice but I don't think a guy of your calibre would settle for anything less than your own standards and quite right too. But the fact are, the stone is flawed, I would explain to the customer that these tiles have a limit to how good the can look without reworking them which would need to be paid for be customer. Can you fix this or is it a case they need redone? Btw J... What's a double Swiss grout joint?

 

[thompsonbrown]

Sounds like you had similar experience to me. What company did your marble come from.i think my supplier sells this product to other companies in uk

Im not sure which company it was but I do know they ordered them online. If I had known a little more about marble I would have clicked on about name Carrara Bianco.Your tiles dont look as glittery as the ones I had. and I think mine were only about 15mm. 300x300.
Like I said on last post I wouldn't have fitted them if I knew they would yellow like they did. But like me install I think a lot of the problem is out of your hands. The customer picked them and wasn't sure about quality.
I think its admirable that your worried about the quality of the finish job. But after laying so many of them I hope your customer compensates you for you tiling standards if they are to be replaced.