Mate, I feel your pain! And judging by the number of responses to your post I think it brought back a lot of unhappy memories to a lot of tilers. Hopefully it will never be as hard as that again. It can be a harsh learning curve at times, especially with the responsibilty of having someone's home at your mercy and a customer watching over you (however understandably) can make you make mistakes you otherwise wouldn't .
Somebody said about not practicing on somebody's home, but I have to say that despite thorough training I felt that nothing fully prepared me for every eventuality, and the reality of being in someone's home. Only by doing it and making mistakes and learning from them (as long as you can spot them and correct them in time) can you improve and gain confidence.
I don't know your circumstances but if you know of an experienced tiler you could try and hook up with, you could learn an awful lot without the pressure of it being entirely your responsibility. You might not get paid very much at first and have to do a lot of grouting but you will get a chance first hand to witness how he/she sets out, prepares, or skillfully gets someone else to do the plumbing and taking the bottom off the door!!:lol: You can still do the odd job for yourself such as a small floor or splashback. If you don't know of one then perhaps try contacting a few, tell them your position and ask if they need an assistant. I even did this for free on a couple of jobs so I could learn (but don't make a habit of it!)
Discover what tools are out there to help make the job quicker, easier and more accurate. Take nothing forgranted, plan, measure and prepare thoroughly, it will save time in the long run, eventually you will trust to this and it will seem like second nature. Know where every tile is going to fall before starting, it may seem like ages before you lay a single tile but once you do they will go up much quicker if you aren't having to keep adjusting. Following old tiling lines can be deceptive, don't automatically assume it was done correctly first time round.
If anything that you haven't been trained in or you don't feel you can safely learn to do on site, such as carpentry and plumbing, you might be better off telling the customer that they need to get those trades in separately. For instance you might want to consider asking the customer if they could make sure the toilet and sink are removed before you come, in order to achieve the best finish. You may lose a job or two but otherwise you otherwise risk having a plumbing incident, cracking pipes water leaking etc. if you're not sure what you are doing. A disaster if you're not fully insured and you don't know where the stop **** is. Often this removal will need to be done anyway as raising the height of the floor will often require raising the height of sinks and cysterns. Hopefully you will eventually become acquainted with a trustworthy plumber who you could work with. You could do his tiling and he your plumbing.
I will only lay tile backing boards on the floors as I don't carry carpentary tools and they are easy to cut and fit using a blade rather than a saw, plus most plywood sheets wouldn't fit in my car. When visiting a job you could specify that the floor needs to be boarded out before it can be tiled for which they will need a carpenter. You could then say that you don't carry carpentary tools but could board it using tile backing boards which are more expensive but will save them the trouble of having another trade involved. I suggest this to keep what you have to chew to a minimum until you are more experienced.
I know a very good tiler who turns up with only a bucket full of tools and says that he only has the tools for tiling! I'm not sure I would fully recommend this approach but he is never short of work. What I'm saying is, that it might be best to concentrate on your strengths. If you are better at tiling but lack the experience in the other areas, then get your tiling up to scratch. The other stuff will follow if you want it to. Hopefully you will get repeat business because you tiled well, not because you took the sink off!
I'm rambling but I'm sure you know all this. I envy you finding this site so early on though. I've only just discovered it. I used to have to phone tile shops, and receive countless unhelpful emails from the Tile Association telling me to buy dull British
Standard tomes before I finally found somewhere to get such technical and moral support that I didn't have to pay for.
Best of luck old chum. I wish my wife would help me like that sometimes
