Van

Discuss Van in the Canada Tile Advice area at TilersForums.com.

Ash, do you think it's worth getting a job, any job, doing something else first? Before starting to set yourself up as a tiler? Going self employed from nothing is a big commitment and is going to test you to the absolute limit. Earn, save some money, start tiling part-time, build up your reputation, upgrade your tools/vehicle, and then go self employed when you have more customers than time in the day...

At last, someone who's saying it how it is. GRR singing from the same songsheet as me.

No matter what the argument, the fact is, any job would help to put you in a better position to be able to prepare yourself for your tiling dream, saving up for tools, vans, insurance, marketing/advertising budgets etc..

Surely an agency job, doing days or weeks here and there is better than spending 24hrs a day on the internet based Tiling NVQ course. Full-time, part-time, temporary, weekends, whatever...

As for a van, we all started in whatever we had available, family cars, rusty old bangers, even borrowing the Mrs' car to do a quick job.

Glass half-full and all that still!
 
M

Mr Tiler

I dont know where this leaves me with my mentor weather I can go back to them when I decide to or not but in respect of what has been said in this thread I began job hunting yesterday......maybe getting some savings behind me will help its better than starting with nothing... I just didn't want anything to come in the way of what I want to do but you guys know more about it then me.... I start a new job on Monday
 

Dan

Admin
Staff member
5,092
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Staffordshire, UK
Hope this one is to your liking tea bagging.

Just stick it out pal no matter what it is. We all start somewhere. And let's be frank, you work to live not live to work, so it doesn't matter what the job is, it's what you do with the cash on your days off that you remember in part when you have alzheimer's when you're 93 years old.

Follow the advice in the thread pal.
 

Dan

Admin
Staff member
5,092
1,323
Staffordshire, UK
Do it.

One of my first jobs was for British Steel with an agency, working nights.

It's shut now, but in its prime it was a brilliant part of the income for the country as they primarily exported and did so to the value of all the car manufacturers put together. Big business. They had their own rail lines in and out of the factory going to ports across the country.

They heated up giant blocks of steel and ran them on huge rollers from one end of the factory to the other at about 25MPH, and in the middle, there was a shaped 'thing' that squeezed it through a gap that got smaller each time. Eventually, you'd end up with H shaped girders and that sort of thing.

As it went through that process, steel filings used to sheer off and end up in a river under the rollers that went from one end of the factory to the other. The idea was the river would cool the filings, and push them down into a collector at the bottom, and when half full, they'd use a magnet to pick them up, and melt them into a block to use again.

Problem was, the river would get blocked and even the walkway at the side of the river would end up part of the river.

My job: go down there in wellies with forks and shovels and clear out the river. Was a daily job, used to take 8 hours to clear a few feet per man, and the factory was half a mile long. The rollers would still be hot, the filings would be sharp, my jeans would be soaking wet through from the minute I got there, the **** in my pocket would often get wet so we used to put them in our hard hats, which used to fall off (or get knocked off by a fellow worker for a laugh so you had to go fishing for it down the river).

Loved it. It paid for going out on a saturday night.

I think you do work to live. Sod the job. It's an income.

Can't find anything on youtube about BS, but here's something that'd give you an idea of the amount of water required, and how filthy everything was.

[video=youtube;6xnKmt_gsLs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xnKmt_gsLs[/video]
 

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