Tilers Forums Hall of Shame....

[DHTiling]

As requested this thread is for pics of bad jobs.....rogue traders...etc etc..


Please only posts about bad jobs and post pics to go with them.....

 

[devonmark]

Re: Hall of shame....

got a couple to put up Dave, got to get them off phone first...

 

[grumpygrouter]

Re: Hall of shame....

Check out my profile pic on TilersTilingTiles site!

 

[Rad2474]

Re: Hall of shame....

got a couple to put up Dave, got to get them off phone first...

He doesn't mean you and your twin on your avatar mark. rrr:

 

[White Room]

Re: Hall of shame....

Found couple of links on John Bridge site of bad tiling http://www.pbase.com/oceangrace24/upstairs_bath

http://www.pbase.com/oceangrace24/upstairs_bath_2

 

[Rob Z]

Re: Hall of shame....

Kitchen floor tiles...virtually zero percent coverage. My guys demo'd about 600 sq ft with a shovel and a wheelbarrow in about 2 hours. The entire floor was like this...I don't think we found one tile that was well bonded to the concrete.

 

[Rob Z]

Re: Hall of shame....

This is what I saw when I first came to the customers' house. They called me with questions about how the contractor was doing the shower pan liner, and from what they told me over the phone I knew it was going to be a good one.:yikes:

The homeowners used the shower twice, and then the shower floor started to come out. The installers had used mastic to set river rock sheet mounted stones. Rather than having a bed of mortar to form the sloping shower floor, they had just layered what they said was pool cement (which I think means they used this stuff the pool plasterers use), which was ~1/2" at the perimeter and down to 0" at the drain. In the photo you can see the whitish stain from the pool cement. It turns out that the pool cement was the only portland cement product they used in this bathroom.

The drain was not a standard three-piece clamping drain, but instead they had just used a floor drain like could be used on a patio or in a basement. They cut the pan liner around the perimter of the drain, and "sealed" it to the edge of the drain with latex painters caulk.

There was no sloping surface under the pan liner, and in fact parts of the liner were lower than the drain, so water collected in the liner and never made it to the drain.

 

[Rob Z]

Re: Hall of shame....

I knew that a lot of mastic had been used in this bathroom because the homeowner told me that "the installers couldn't finish for a long time because "something" wouldn't dry and we had to run fans for a week or more in the bathroom." These guys had leveled the floor in the bathroom with mastic, and it was a layer ~3/4" thick. We pulled it out in big rubbery sheets...the stuff was still pliable and soft after 3-4 months.

The next picture shows the shower, once I started taking out the wall tile. Most of the tiles in this shower either has no bond to the wall at all, or if they did have contact with the mastic...it was still wet after 3-4 months. The pen shows a glob of wet mastic that I dug out to show the homeowner.

You can see the shower pan liner on the base of the wall, and it is on the shower side of the tile backer board. The mastic was troweled right on the vinyl pan liner and the tile set right to the liner. At the intersection with the curb, they didn't use dam corners and in fact they cut the liner all the way down to the floor so that they could remove the excess material from the folds. They cut each corner in the shower to remove material and never sealed any of the cuts. This shower was doomed, anyway, but this really shows that they had no idea what they were doing.

The curb is constructed of pressure treated 2X4's with cement board screwed to the wood. Where there is pan liner on the curb they ran screws through it.

I'll have more to show tomorrow night when I get home from work.

 

[Olz]

Re: Hall of shame....

These are from a bathroom i got called to repair, there were big holes in the walls behind some tiles where boards werent big enough and the fitter could be bothered to cut them to fill gaps, there were slots cut into tiles filled with bits of wood to screw the shower screens to, which had been done in the wrong place and so left exposed, dot and dabbed tiles falling off all over the place, the void between the wall and shower tray some 8" wide and 4" deep by 2' long had been filled with expanding foam then tiled over. Areas of grouting missed completly and badly lipped tiles. Afew tiles had been stuck on with no more nails!

tilersforums.com | Tile Forums | Tiling Forum - Oli's Album: Rogue Trader
http://www.tilersforums.com/members/oli-albums-rogue-trader-picture1207t-no-Silicon-where-floor-meets-wall.jpg

 

[cornish_crofter]

Re: Hall of shame....

Kitchen floor tiles...virtually zero percent coverage. My guys demo'd about 600 sq ft with a shovel and a wheelbarrow in about 2 hours. The entire floor was like this...I don't think we found one tile that was well bonded to the concrete.

From the little I can see there it looks like the grouting wasn't too bad. Such a shame they didn't stick them down properly before grouting.

 

[Rob Z]

Re: Hall of shame....

Hi CC,

Some of the grout was so soft that it could be scraped out with a plastic scraper or something similar. There were a lot places where they grout had holes in it or was otherwise not filled for a flush and solid joint. These guys had used muriatic acid on the slab in an attempt to remove glue from a previous laminate floor, and all it did was ruin everything in the condo that was metal-the window frames, all the appliances, the locksets, the ductwork, etc.

I'll go look for some more photos.

 

[Rob Z]

Re: Hall of shame....

This shows how wet the mastic still was in places behind the tile. The tile had been set months before and the stuff never dried. You can also see the pan liner was sliced in the corners to avoid folding it, and the tile was running down over the pan liner.:mad2:

 

[david campbell]

Re: Hall of shame....

got a few pics coming soon when the customer e-mails them to me,went to do a regrouting job:huh2: on a shower cubicle and replace a few loose tiles,amazingly i found there wasn't even plasterboard behind the tiles but the wall had been sheeted with ply:yikes:,there wasn't any tanking either and this was done by a reputable bathroom company from the south side of glasgow:huh2:

 

[Rob Z]

Re: Hall of shame....

Well, something is wrong with my DVD unit on my computer and I can't get pictures off of the discs. :mad2: I'd like to finish the ones that I started, and also to find the shower we tore out several years ago that had tile set with mastic on top of WALLPAPER. Go figure!

 

[Grace'sDad]

Re: Hall of shame....

Here's one I started today....
Oddly enough, it took all day to get the floor up - only 12sqm.
I managed to get about a dozen off cleanly like this, the rest fought back, slicing my wrist and sending splinters into my arms :11:

The customer said she thought something was wrong, as the tiles "sang" when she swept them.

Floor lasted 12 years with no breaks - spot fixing: it's the future!