Public Thread!: Poor Tiling Workmanship by DIY and Rogue Traders

Certainly lost the pattern there

I love this job. You hear some great stories, that you guys out on the road my not get very often.

This is todays howler!

Customer went into our showroom. He was having a look round and spotted one of our merchandising team re-tiling a small display of metro tiles. He watched him for a bit, went up to the counter and said "Like what he's doing. So I'll have 15 sqm of them please."

He's doing his shower and bathroom. He was asked if he wanted adhesive, tanking etc... He said he had the adhesive and would just take the tanking kit and a few tubes of Silicon and a bag of grout. Picked his stuff up from the warehouse and off he went.

That was two weeks ago and he has been tiling it gradually over the last week and completed it this weekend.

I get a call this morning from him.

Customer: "Tiles were finished 3 days ago. Looked good but they have started to fall off the wall. I've only used the bloody shower twice. A lot of the grout has cracked too".
Me: "Ok sir, sorry to hear you've had an issue. Let me just bring up your order........... Here it is. I can see you didn't have the adhesive from us. Can you confirm which adhesive you used?
Customer: "Yeah, Tecbond."
Me: "Tecbond. I'm sorry that's not a make I've heard of."
Customer: "Haven't you. Well its called Tecbond Fast Setting..... 15mm"
Me: "15mm??? Thats too much for an adhesive bed. Was it ready mixed or a powder?"
Customer: "Neither. Its one of them sticks, 15mm is the stick width."
Me: "I'm sorry sir, I don't follow???"
Customer: "15mm Glue stick. Goes in the back of the gun and it melts??? I put a good dollop in each corner and 2 in the middle."

*** Long pause, while i did a suppressed giggle and tried for the life of me to think back to see if it was a voice I recognised, and that this was some kind of absolutely genius wind-up.... but no. It wasn't ***

Me: "No. No.... You can't do that. It needs to be tile adhesive. Why did you think the glue sticks would be ok?"
Customer: "That guy that was tiling in your showroom. He was doing his display with it. So I just did what he did. I do carpentry as a hobby so had loads in my garage."
Me: "That display is deliberately changed every 6 to 8 weeks. We use glue sticks and Silicon to make sure the tiles are easy to take off when the board needs updating.
Customer: "Well I brought Silicon, but I put a few up without and the glue was doing alright on its own so I didn't use any. Would it have been better if I had?"
Me: ".................No................ You're not understanding what I'm saying. If you WANT the tiles to come off, use glue. Otherwise a proper cement based adhesive should have been used."
Customer: "oh......Oh right...... Ummmm..... Well I suppose I'll have to take them down and do it again. Do you do anything that takes glue off the back of the tiles or the wall? Its that tanking stuff you gave me."
Me: "You'll be struggling with the tiles. As for the tanking, if there is any glue still stuck, scrape it off and paint over any areas that peel off, with the membrane."
Customer: "Ok, I'll do that. So which Silicon did you recommend for sticking them on with again?
Me: "NO. NOT Silicon! **chuckle** Tile adhesive."

This went on for a further 10 minutes, asking why glue shouldn't be used and why our guy was using Silicon.....

I have asked for pictures and I really hope he sends them in. They will be printed and framed in gold!

@Paul C.
I thank u from the bottom of my heart, truly I do!
That is probably the best case of monkey see, monkey do
I have EVER heard of!
Again thank you! Hahahahaha

My pleasure. I hear a few but that truly will take some beating.

Lol...bless . Reminds me of the clip on here a while ago about the american diy guru showing how to tile a shower area with Silicon dabs !!!!

What about this fancy work, job I had to do last week, the person that done this is lucky the house didn't burn down The tiles more or less fell off with little effort, it was only done 6 months

That must of smelt gross

This is in a kids play room, all of it was done in timber, the back the surround and the hearth what an idiot. This is how I done it, it won't go on fire now at least. I used cement board at the back and tied the blocks together with mesh

Markltile said:

This is in a kids play room, all of it was done in timber, the back the surround and the hearth what an idiot. This is how I done it, it won't go on fire now at least. View attachment 79808 View attachment 79809 View attachment 79810 I used cement board at the back and tied the blocks together with mesh

Click to expand...

looks great mate

Take it the fire is up and running

Yeah job done and customer happy.

Do you need a gas safe cert for that...

...HETAS I thought? May be wrong though

I don't know but I didn't install the stove, I must look into that

Nothing combustible within 15" (5" flue). What an idiot. Personally, I don't think I'd have a log burner in a kids play room anyway!