What a bodge up in the bathroom

[lawrenso]

Hi Guys,

I am working away at the moment and had a tiler in doing the bathroom. The tiles are 600*300 Youngstone laid in landscape in porcelain from CTD in two colours - light in the middle (4 high) with dark top (1.5) and bottom (2) - with strips of square glass mossiac inbetween the different colour changes (so two strips)

The first weekend I got home and looked at what I could see and had to pull him up on the fact that he bad but the quarter round beading over both the cut outs for the hinges and also over the door catch striking plate. Could not really tell what the rest was like due to it still being battened out.

last weekend - I got home and found a mess basically.He had osrted the hinges out but not the striking plate

He has tilled the wall around the window. at the bottom he is quite on although the cut edges are very rough and uneven. On the left hand side of the window, the tile edge runs away from the window to stand proud by a aprox 1cm from the window edge. Also, along the top and down the right hand side edge he has used spotting. I have checked with my own spirit level (2 mtr) and found that it is the tiles that are angled away from the wall - not vice versa. In the top right hand corner of the window I can stick my little finger in towards the first knuckle and you can actually look down the gap and see the spot fixing and bare wall and tiles. I also do not see how he can put the beading

Also, worringly you can look down the gap and see the bits of board he has had to use to pad out for the glass beads.

We have had him leave out the tiles around where the bath is going to be fitted, and where the head of end of the bath is you can feel a simular gap where you can get a little finger in. It also appears that he has only used a 6mm bed from what I can see

Also, there is differences in levels - ie the bottom two tiles are forward of the 4 beige above by about 4-5mm leaving a noticable ledge, and a lot of the glass mosaics are very proud or sunk and even twisted.

I would say that out of the whole room, one wall is good.

Now I have approached him on this and he has blamed the walls. However, I prepped the walls, removing the old tiles, the emulsion (was only half tiled), making good, WPB tanking etc and although I would say they weren't totally perpindicular there were in a pretty good condition. 2 walls are wet plastered and two are plasterboard on studs (screwed). He told me that he has had to spot out up to 1/2" behind some tiles, and there is nothing he can do about it.

To me it looks like he has gone out with a tile and then it has grown bigger and bigger - perhaps because of the 6mm bed.

He also planed the door edge (not the top or bottom) and kn%&"*ered that so we need a new door now:furious3:

So here are my questions

1. Should the tiler inform you before starting if the walls are out (I believe yes to indemnify himself)
2. Grouting - these are a rectified edge tile - should it be grouted to the surface?
3. Should the grouting be done before the job is finished and should the grouting go the full thickness of the tile/mosaic (as ours isnt even 1mm thick in places you can stick your nail through it).
4. What come back have I got on the guy ie if we need to have tiles removed etc.. to put the job right

This guy has been trading for a few years (lives local)

All help and advice welcome

Cheers

Steve

 

[LM Ceramics]

from that pic it doesnt look to bad but its when you look closer at the wonky mosaics and packed out tiles then you see the problems in my view had this tiler paid more attention to detail ie prep th walls make sure there flat especially with a mosaic border(not using hardboard to pack them out) then we might have been looking at a different job from this guy

 

[CJ]

Shocking :yikes::yikes:

 

[lawrenso]

The guy is a nice guy - polite and everything. I think that he has bitten off more than he can chew working with this complexity of pattern with the large format, not ensuring the tiles went on even causing him to have to drift out further with the rectified edges....

The trouble is - what do I do, in an earlier post I theorised that possibly it could cost upwards of 2K to put this right - money we could do without having to fork out during this environment - but do we take him to the small claims court where we could end up wiping him out in this environment. To coin a phrase - the devil or the deep blue sea....

Steve

 

[sWe]

That's not even workmanship...

 

[White Room]

He might be a nice guy but the work is dire

 

[Colour Republic]

From the first few pics I couldn't tell what was so bad and then... Oh! oh I see what's happening now! Did you ask him to make your bathroom smaller?

I really don't know what to suggest, sorry.

This is :yikes: (rotate picture)

BTW if he hasn't cut too much off the door, that damage can be repaired with wood filler easily enough. In trying to cut the door down he's run an electric planer along the bottom of the door and hasn't been carful enough when getting to the end which has splintered the other side

 

[2Balls]

Substandard!!!if they start coming away from the wall in a year or so, leave them on his doorstep!:yikes:2Balls

 

[doug boardley]

The guy is a nice guy - polite and everything. I think that he has bitten off more than he can chew working with this complexity of pattern with the large format, not ensuring the tiles went on even causing him to have to drift out further with the rectified edges....

The trouble is - what do I do, in an earlier post I theorised that possibly it could cost upwards of 2K to put this right - money we could do without having to fork out during this environment - but do we take him to the small claims court where we could end up wiping him out in this environment. To coin a phrase - the devil or the deep blue sea....

Steve

The guy needs to made an example of imo, what if he continues to trade to this standard and before long a tile is gonna come loose when perhaps a young child is in the bath?! Nasty!!

 

[tile55]

Shocking workmanship, could this not have been pointed out to the guy as he was working, so you could nip it in the bud before it got worse.

 

[lawrenso]

Shocking workmanship, could this not have been pointed out to the guy as he was working, so you could nip it in the bud before it got worse.

Hi Tile55

I work away Monday to Friday offshore at the moment. My wife is hopeless as well when it comes to things like this.

When I came back the first weekend I pulled him up on the edging round the door going over the cut outs of the hinges and over the striking plates - he did have a go at rectifying the hinges but decided to hack the door instead :mad2:. But everythig was battened out and no mosaics were up.

He had put battening under and above the beige tiles and a batten where the lower mosaics are and a batten 1 tile above the floor and it was impossible to really tell the condition as it was basically only the beige that had partly been done.

It was only on coming back the second weekend and finding this mess.....


Steve

 

[lawrenso]

Substandard!!!if they start coming away from the wall in a year or so, leave them on his doorstep!:yikes:2Balls

Hey 2Balls,

I am working at the other end of the country from you - Munich!!

Steve

 

[hillhead]

Total crap tiling,i'v seen that sort of work before difference was the customer was given the tilers(so called) name and number from a tile shop !! he should have went back to them !!!
You need someone round to look at that quick.

 

[2Balls]

Hey 2Balls,

I am working at the other end of the country from you - Munich!!

Steve

Hi Lawrenso, I thought Munich, was in Bäyen, (seperate country)the land where the Doctor recommends Beer for breakfast:8:2Balls

 

[mikethetile]

hi lawrenso

sorry you ended up with a job like this

the guys not a tiler and got out of his depth with this

your not going to like this but

you need to take responsability for this as the client

you spent 1k on materials and didnt take care to employ a decent fixer

its easy to say it now but you should know the procedure of getting more than one quote, references ,go look at their work etc

this forum is full of professional tilers who take pride in their work. some of them would be local to you

im sorry to sound hard but as a tradesman who cares about the finished job iget sick of being asked to rectify work like this when all the client had to do was take care to employ a decent tradesman in the first place

dont worry about putting the guy out of business, hes doing that not you

go legal on him and get your money back and the cost of rectification which to be honest looks like a complete hack off and retile

im sorry to be brutal with you but there are a lot of first class tilers out there who would have loved that job

 

[lawrenso]

hi lawrenso

sorry you ended up with a job like this

the guys not a tiler and got out of his depth with this

your not going to like this but

you need to take responsability for this as the client

you spent 1k on materials and didnt take care to employ a decent fixer

its easy to say it now but you should know the procedure of getting more than one quote, references ,go look at their work etc

this forum is full of professional tilers who take pride in their work. some of them would be local to you

im sorry to sound hard but as a tradesman who cares about the finished job iget sick of being asked to rectify work like this when all the client had to do was take care to employ a decent tradesman in the first place

dont worry about putting the guy out of business, hes doing that not you

go legal on him and get your money back and the cost of rectification which to be honest looks like a complete hack off and retile

im sorry to be brutal with you but there are a lot of first class tilers out there who would have loved that job

Hi Mike

we totally understand your statement above and you are right - I ripped out the bathroom last August when out of work for a month or so, then ended up on a poor paying contract, then out of work again for 6 weeks and started on this contract several weeks ago now - where I am overseas in Germany. We perhaps moved a bit too quick - we already had the tiles from last year (October time) and this guy came on a recommendation. Although if we had looked a bit deeper and asked around we would of found out otherwise as is now becomming apparent from other people I speak to. I do wish I had been around as I could of perhaps put a stop sooner to it but that is how the cookie crumbles - especially for us lately

The trouble is where we live we do not know that many people so do end up relying on Yellow pages/Van livery and a limited word of mouth (mainly other childrens mums at the school via wife - I am always away!!)

Anyway - I am going to write a letter to him - stating that we are not satisfied on the grounds of his dangerous spot fixing and poor quality stating that we wish for the bathroom to be totally re-done and not by him and see what happens from there.

Also - I havent ignored you as I thought I had posted a response last night- dooh!

Thanks to everybody for the help, advice and support

Cheers

Steve