i just don't get some tilers

[The D]

i have just picked up a job 130m2 floor. The tiler that has done the bathrooms has spat his dummy out over sanding the floor and walked of the job. Now i know this tiler from the old days, i have took work of him before he was tiling for a kitchen company but went on a 4 week holiday, they called me to cover the jobs but they never used him again after that and i still tile for them now 10 years on. the client on this job got my number from her mom as i did a job for her about 2 years ago.
Funnily the client found out about sanding the floor from the forum. this tiler told her it was not necessary and that is where it all went pear shaped for him. They called me and i said yes defo the floor needs sanding and priming also i recommended fitting G mat as there was UFH. when i had a look at the rooms the other tiler had done i was shocked he had used 3m ply on to chip board and cement based adhesive on to un primed plaster and dot and dabbed it :yikes::yikes::mad2:

 

[Spud]

I have had a similar problem this week Deano,I asked a chippy on a job strengthen a wooden floor and to change the chipboard to 18mm plywood the buider phoned me and said that his other tiler always tiled on floating floors and in his 30 years of building he has never had a tiling failure, I find this hard to believe as when we arrived on site he had overlaid floor boards with 6mm ply in the bathrooms which his chppy primed with pva i pulled my lads off them until they were correctly prepped and sent the builder an e-mail stating we dont offer a guarantee on work that isnt prepped to industry standards

 

[The D]

I have had a similar problem this week Deano,I asked a chippy on a job strengthen a wooden floor and to change the chipboard to 18mm plywood the buider phoned me and said that his other tiler always tiled on floating floors and in his 30 years of building he has never had a tiling failure, I find this hard to believe as when we arrived on site he had overlaid floor boards with 6mm ply in the bathrooms which his chppy primed with pva i pulled my lads off them until they were correctly prepped and sent the builder an e-mail stating we dont offer a guarantee on work that isnt prepped to industry standards

This tiler got the job because he was the builders tiler so you can say he dose this sort of thing all the time. How do they get away with it ?

 

[hillhead]

I'm a builders tiler too i suppose as i only do work for one,lol.
I don't be long telling him what's right and wrong, i de-skimmed a wall 2 weeks ago in front of him,lol.
Charged him accordingly for the problem too.

 

[Time's Ran Out]

I could give you my opinions but I'd be banned:smilewinkgrin:
One of the benefits of a stagnant economy IMHO is that it will weed out some of the poorer workers and those with a customer portfolio will still be there on the upturn.

 

[Scott]

I dunno how they get away with it but they do, it seems for all the failures we see there are lots that simply dont fail

 

[CJ CERAMICS]

he has obviously been doing this his whole career and doesnt feel the need to change.

 

[jolly fix]

there are so many around like him,im sure most are just lazy,the others havent a clue.every job should be the best you have done,with prep and tiling,should give 110% every time.dont think these guys ever thought like that..shame...but i have had so much work due to people like that not doing the job as should be...

 

[Bolter]

I was told the other day that I am known as a moaner. When I quizzed said person on what makes me a moaner, they said that "everything is never right" meaning that I complain about bath boxings being made of timber, skirting being fitted in kitchens where floor is laid, paint on the walls, plots incomplete but asked to start work, screeding poor in the important places etc etc. To which my reply was "its hard not to moan when everyone else knows more about your trade than I do, and even with advise, they do the opposite."

But now im labelled the moaner. Not something I want to be, not a label I want to have, but I need things done right as I will be paying for it if it fails.

 

[andy8758]

i have just picked up a job 130m2 floor. The tiler that has done the bathrooms has spat his dummy out over sanding the floor and walked of the job. Now i know this tiler from the old days, i have took work of him before he was tiling for a kitchen company but went on a 4 week holiday, they called me to cover the jobs but they never used him again after that and i still tile for them now 10 years on. the client on this job got my number from her mom as i did a job for her about 2 years ago.
Funnily the client found out about sanding the floor from the forum. this tiler told her it was not necessary and that is where it all went pear shaped for him. They called me and i said yes defo the floor needs sanding and priming also i recommended fitting G mat as there was UFH. when i had a look at the rooms the other tiler had done i was shocked he had used 3m ply on to chip board and cement based adhesive on to un primed plaster and dot and dabbed it :yikes::yikes::mad2:

Hi Dean, Thats the trouble with mobile phone cameras - for your problem I recommend this:
Canon PowerShot D10 Underwater Digital Camera (3508B009AA) - Warehouse Express
Takes pics underwater too, and Warehouse Express is selling them nearly £70 cheaper than rrp. It does not get steamed up lens when you get excited about bad workmanship! :lol::lol:

 

[Barry bp]

Years ago i worked on hotel every bathroom had graffeti on walls saying bad things about me because i complained about poor work and prep by other trades that i had to keep getting over or putting right. Its not always easy trying to do a good job! It made me tile over walls quicker so made more money

 

[White Room]

I was on a job loooooooooooong time ago where we had to render walls in shower areas, they had to be breadth, width and depth,
Meaning everything had to plumb the depth of the walls had be exactly the same and between each shower devide they also had to be the same measurement..

That was for the tilers and the site agent was adament about the prep, never seen that since though.

 

[MTiler]

I took over a job last year where the previous 'tiler' didnt prime the walls, dot and dabbed with pot ady, with God awful cuts. This was with 600x 300 and 400x600 porc tiles. The customer was initially happy until a couple of the tiles fell off the wall! The tiler reckoned someone had sabotaged his work, priceless. He did that all by himself. The whole lot had to be ripped out which didnt take long as the ady hadnt dried. he also did a couple of floors and the customer is worried thats going to fail. Theres already a couple of loose ones been found which I tried to fix but theres UFH underneath.

One good thing about taking over a bodged job is that the customer loves you for doing it properly.

Badly prepped wooden floors seems to be a big problem.

missyT

 

[Tenchman]

we suffer because ours is a finishing trade, lots of other people have put work in before you to get done by the quickest means.

Which is often incorrect, obviously there are plenty that do their job properly but we all know that plenty don't.

So many finishing trades who are good & diligent at their job get called moaners, by these others who i would refer to as a " jobber " or worse but won't put that down as it will get pulled lol!

I sometimes end up on sites which are big enough to have a canteen etc, i never sit with the rest of the construction trades, me & my crew lock a room and use that. reason we are bound to cause some aggro with the others as 98% of my work is restoration and therefore usually on a listed building.

When I had a larger Co we did commercial & domestic work commercial ranged from doing MOD stuff = 33,000 sq metres to Motorway services and large floors for MOD on Navy installation's one wall was 1,200 sq metres of 8 inch x inch finger tiles.

So i do know what domestic & commercial work is like. However on listed building work you have a crew of ordinary construction workers alongside varied specialists.

the construction crew (cc from now on) tend generally to be ok with aspects of the job that don't require any input from a specialist.
The minute is gets into being guided they go ape-s**t and things kick off, we worked at night on a biggish contract =£2.5 million we worked at night, during the day morons chipped & pulled hand-made petrol blue 6x6 tiles off the wall from our work night before.
we had to install vid cameras it was a nightmare.

I've had other workers run amok in our screed that we laid in the morning , the guy we caught doing that ended up going down a chute into a skip.

As finishers we are always going to be at the mercy of those who work before us, that's why as i said in a previous post lot's ot tilers are known by other trades as being snappy or grumpy or moaners.

we would be skipping along with silly grins if we knew that every other trade in front had done their job properly.

Most of my work as you can see from posted albums or pics is on floors but we do the odd wall = murals or Victorian repro kitchens, i am amazed that in this age of laser level's etc etc. that sparky's still manage to put sockets in out of whack on a consistent basis !!!!!!!

On the odd time any of us get to a job and it appears that previous trades have done everything spot on ? what's the first thing we think ? Yeah what's wrong here it's too good they must have sneaked some crap in done badly somewhere.

you could spend longer checking even if there is nothing wrong ha ha it's the nature of our work, we are always going to get others trying it on or mucking it up.

you just have to say no to shoddy stuff and walk off or get it sorted , or do as lot's of us do and have it done from the ground up yourself.