Tiling Job - Tiles not straight

Doozergirl

Something that my 'dumb tiler' knocked up for our clients.  

 

benson1980

Doozergirl said:

Section62 said:

NSG666 said:

Blimey if you employ a tiler to tile a square cornered room with square tiles and need to check he's not fitted them on the skew either you employ some dumb tilers or I've been very lucky to work only with those with brains. I must be lucky none of them ever put the tiles pattern side down.

Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, event the most skilled and highly rated tradespeople.

A key function of supervision is to have (at least) a second person to (ideally) catch the mistakes of the first - at a time where rectification is possible with minimum cost/waste/delay.

Save money/effort on supervision, pay for it with avoidable errors and mistakes.

Exactly this.  These jobs are carried out by humans.  If you put at least two sets of eyes on it, it's unlikely to go wrong in the first place.  

I’m with nsg. You cannot expect a layperson who at the end of the day isn’t a subject matter expert, and is probably paying someone in the first place to do a job because they are busy with their own lives/jobs/haven’t got the skills, to intrusively supervise. And if we need to consider a project manager when we employ individual tradespeople to do one off jobs like this we are in trouble.

That said our personal real world experience is that that the one and only time we employed a professional tiler (with excellent reviews) he wanted to tile directly onto squeaky chipboard and cut right angles round door architraves rather than undercut. Until I stopped him- what irks me about our scenario, and the OPs situation, is that it isn’t a mistake. It’s just being lazy and not caring/taking the time to measure up or do the job properly. 

Plus he hasn’t even admitted his mistake so a proper wrong un in my view. Wonder if he’d be happy if it was his kitchen floor. 

To the OP- did you pay in the end?

Doozergirl

You're with NSG but you did exactly what I'm suggesting and caught your dodgy tiler before he'd finished the work?  

You'd have preferred to have left him to finish before you discovered it was lousy work? 

I've got 20 years experience of never having to rip up a job, but whatever floats your boat.  I must be wrong.  

benson1980

Doozergirl said:

You're with NSG but you did exactly what I'm suggesting and caught your dodgy tiler before he'd finished the work?  

You'd have preferred to have left him to finish before you discovered it was lousy work? 

 

I would have been fuming if I hadn’t spotted it in time- but then wouldn’t have paid him. I just happened to come home at the right time to spot him laying out the tiles before putting backer board down and questioned him. Luck rather than judgement really and I trusted him that he knew what he was doing!

Doozergirl

benson1980 said:

Doozergirl said:

You're with NSG but you did exactly what I'm suggesting and caught your dodgy tiler before he'd finished the work?  

You'd have preferred to have left him to finish before you discovered it was lousy work? 

 

I would have been fuming if I hadn’t spotted it in time- but then wouldn’t have paid him. I just happened to come home at the right time to spot him laying out the tiles before putting backer board down and questioned him. Luck rather than judgement really and I trusted him that he knew what he was doing!

So we're agreed.  It's a good idea to pop in and check that everything is going okay a few hours into the job to save any later heartache.  

Just in case the stranger you've let into your house has either misunderstood something or is an outright charlatan.  

Section62

benson1980 said:

...and the OPs situation, is that it isn’t a mistake. It’s just being lazy and not caring/taking the time to measure up or do the job properly. 

I'm interested in what makes you draw that conclusion.

None of us were there and saw how the tiler approached the job, and we don't know the logic he used.  Even the OP has been unable to get that information out of him.

But looking at the numbers the OP posted in that sketch there is a way of achieving the outcome by a simple error of adding 20mm rather than deducting 20mm (or vice versa) when making a setting out measurement.

Only the tiler knows if that is what happened.  But if it is then it is one of those classic examples of very simple errors with disproportionately serious outcomes... the kind of thing that a second person would hopefully spot soon after the error was made.

There's also no need to "intrusively supervise". An occasional look-in when critical stuff is happening is often all it takes.

gozaimasu

All this hindsight rubbish instead of telling the OP how to deal with it NOW. Take the tiler to court. Use your (very convincing) diagram with all the measurements as evidence.

If the homeowner is supposed to be supervising qualified professionals in doing their job, then with tiling it's best done at the measuring up stage, making sure the tiler is measuring everything up right and the lines will be straight. Given the diagram, it's hard for anyone to understand how it go so wrong. The tiler should be ashamed. Even I'd do a better job. Not that I'd ever tile a floor, but y'know.

Jeepers_Creepers

I'm guessing that no-one on here is actually suggesting that it's in any way Jack's responsibility to check that the tiler is laying out the tiles correctly? (By 'correctly', I mean noticing that the first row was not dead parallel to the walls.)

Phew.

I wonder if this tiler also had the job of taking up the old tiles - the ones that had been laid perfectly?! That would be double-whatsit.

gozaimasu

Jeepers_Creepers said:

I'm guessing that no-one on here is actually suggesting that it's in any way Jack's responsibility to check that the tiler is laying out the tiles correctly? (By 'correctly', I mean noticing that the first row put down was not dead parallel to the walls.)

Phew.

Exactly! I would argue that it is isn't his responsibility to check, but other people here are. Forgive me for stating the obvious but I couldn't tell if you were having a go at me or not.

NSG666

Doozergirl said:

NSG666 said:

Doozergirl said:

That would really mess with my head, but why don't people check in on at least part of a job so that mistakes can be called out when they're fresh and the job isn't finished!  That's my job.  Design, measure, purchase, agree the design and method on site and then check progress.  And take responsibility for the lot!  If the correct communication hasn't happened and it starts badly, the tiles can at least be removed whilst the adhesive is still wet.  At the worst, you haven't wasted an entire room's worth of product. 

If you don't want to pay someone to supervise and project manage it's fine, but you have to do all of that yourself and the buck does stop at you.   When you buy materials and someone else brings labour, you take a risk.  They're not responsible for the materials, only the labour.   It can save money, but when you get caught out it really costs 😞.  

Blimey if you employ a tiler to tile a square cornered room with square tiles and need to check he's not fitted them on the skew either you employ some dumb tilers or I've been very lucky to work only with those with brains. I must be lucky none of them ever put the tiles pattern side down.

Rude, much?  Our tiler is excellent.  We discuss everything beforehand in quite some detail, and I'll
even make sure that any new elements are built to suit good cuts in the chosen tiles, but it took a few tilers to find the one that we needed to keep and not let go of.  That's a significant benefit of repeated experience.    

If you're employing someone you don't know, the likelihood of you getting exactly what you want, even with a conversation, is going to be far lower than me leaving my guy to his own devices, that's a fact! 

Look where the OP is now.  I'm glad you're happy with your tiling, but they're not and it didn't need to get to this point.  

I'm not looking to fall out with anyone but the mistake is so basic that most people wouldn't even consider it a possibility from a professional. In my opinion what the tiler has done is akin to putting wall tiles on the slant from the horizontal and I cannot see that JB is at fault at all.

In your profession I'm sure you deal with some complex designs and regular input and oversight is essential to ensure your ideas are being translated into your vision but this is a bog standard job. Show your tiler JBs drawing of what his tiler has done and I bet he'll laugh.