Shower room pricing

[RDTiling]

Hi all.

As some of you will know (those that have stayed awake long enough to read some of my posts!), I started tiling in June of last year. Until now, I've been getting by with tile replacements, floor tiling and kitchen splashbacks etc (the small jobs that I'm assuming most tilers start out on).

A friend of mine has asked me to quote to for doing their shower room. I’ve attached a couple of pics of how it currently looks. It measures up to approximately 16sqm in total, including the floor, which is concrete.



Basically, the room is getting ripped back to the bare walls, being framed and overboarded, with either plasterboard or Hardie (I’m pushing for Hardie).

The wall that currently has the WC and shower on it, is to have a new shower tray fitted and then they want the width of the shower tray tiled with Mosaics (300 x 300 sheets) from Victor Paris (I don’t know the exact ones as they couldn’t find the literature from they were given, however I’ve asked them to check if they need sealed.) I’ve recommended a tanking kit on the wall with the shower and the wall to the right.

The rest of the room is to be tiled with plain ceramics (400 x 200) and the floor, despite the small size, they have gone with 600 x 600 tiles.

The wall that has the recess in it is being knocked back so that it is flat with no recess.

I’ve never really worked with mosaic sheets before (other than a small splash back in a WC). Although the finished article was good, it was painstaking and messy, as I had adhesive through all the joints and spent what seemed like an eternity to clean them out before grouting.

I was thinking that BAL Mosaic Fix would be the adhesive of choice for the mosaic fixing, however does anyone have any tips on fixing and setting out for Mosaic sheets, as whilst I can cut full tiles of the mosaic sheet, I’m assuming you can’t cut a mosaic tile in half for example?

Also, the wall with the mosaics are going to have two new hot and cold feeds, is the best way to cut holes for these to simply remove tiles from the mesh where the two pipes stick out the wall, as again I’m assuming you can’t (or shouldn’t try to) drill mosaic sheets?

For the rest of the room, I was thinking of priming with acrylic primer and using a standard setting adhesive from Weber, as I hate having to rush using rapid set, although I might use this on the floor so that I can grout the same day, after I’ve primed the floor with an SBR slurry mix.

So my initial thoughts for pricing for the tiling, including the mosaic sheets was £300, with materials one top of that. Does that seem reasonable? – I’m trying to avoid going in too low.

I just wanted to run through my thoughts and pricing with you guys before I formally price up the job (which is why I’ve posted this in the Arms rather than the main forum). If yout think I’ve overlooked anything please let me know – its my first shower room, so want it to be perfect.

Its situations like this where I'm hoping that ascess to the arms pays dividends so that I can actually start making some ££'s, as I know that over the last 9 months, I've been (majorly) under pricing.

If you are still awake after all of the above, thanks for reading and thank you in advance for your input.

Rich

 

[RDTiling]

so you say your 'Quoting' the job for a friend......dose this mean your friend will be getting other quotes as well, or the jobs yours anyway.........just asking so John can carry on sleeping well at night...:smilewinkgrin:

He is getting one other quote too - the guy they have doing the plumbing, his brother is a tiler too, but they have use him before and thought he was expensive. From the area I saw of what he had done before in their kitchen , he did a cracking job of it.

 

[RDTiling]

[MENTION=42603]3_fall[/MENTION] I've not seen the new shower cubicle yet, but you are probably better in the know about how high most shower cubicle screen are than me!

Thank you for the advice on fitting the mosaic's - it is very useful to know.

I think you've just established where I went wrong the last time with the mosaics - too much pressure was applied with my grout float (I think the phrase 'touch of an elephant' just about covers it). I did use a mosaic trowel though.

When I bought my rubi washboy, it came with a a big sponge thing that you use over the rollers and it also came with some sort of foam covered float, which I've never used - so I used that to flatten the mosaic splashback against the wall - i went on the logic that as it was larger than my grout float i could apply an even pressure across a larger area meaning it would sit flat. It did, just pushed a bit to hard!

 

[thompsonbrown]

Thank you to all who have replied to this.

To be honest a part of me says that I am happy to do. 95% of this room, it's the Mosaic bit I'm unsure of. Whilst I'm of the opinion that everyone has to do everything for the first time at some stage I'm thinking I should learn to walk before I learn to run, so on this occasion I'm going to turn down the job.

I'm on my mobile typing this and I know some of you have questioned some of my original comments. I'm not ignoring them and will reply when I'm in front of my PC later tonight.

Quoting is probably a weak point for me (as you've gathered from my pricing!) but I'll expand on my thought process later.

Thanks again for your input.

Rich

Your price does seem low and I know how awkward it is to price a job for a friend. The mosaics wont be a problem if you are over boarding that wall.
The wall where you have the recess might be a bit of a problem to knock back flat. That corner boxing by the toilet will contain an automatic air valve and will have to stay and be accessible.