Work , work , work and more work.

[Dave]

Happens all the time Andy ... They have the tiles all bought and think you can start on Monday lol lol .

 

[John Benton]

I'm booked up virtually tll Xmas have the odd days here and there, 2 full kitchens, supply and fit including tiling ready for early next year booked in.

My spark and plasterer are both booked till nearly Xmas as well, must be doing something right. Turkey on the table again this year

 

[Andy Allen]

Im braking up for xmas early this year got to have hernia opp on 15th dec.....will try and cram in as mich as I can before that.....3 weeks off over xmas then back to it....worked out quite well really. .

 

[Brian the Tile]

Happens all the time Andy ... They have the tiles all bought and think you can start on Monday lol lol .

I can do that gis a job lol

 

[Colour Republic]

Ahhh the old multi-trader bashing again.

Sometimes multi traders are better placed to take on the design and installation of bathrooms in particular.

Take this one for example...

As a multi trader under taking the plumbing, decoration, tiling, carpentry, lighting.. it meant that every thing lines up perfectly

Take these recesses for example. I knew where every tile was going to fall before any of the boxing was built. So the recesses where placed so it fell directly in the center of the grout lines, the height of the recesses where also based on the tile size, I knew that I would also have to offset the recesses to take in to account the thickness of the tile placed on the adjacent wall. Do you think a tiler would spend a day on site marking out everything for the chippy to get every thing bang on mm perfect?

Would the chippy also go to the trouble of making sure the plasterboard didn't have any cut edges to the front so the decorators job wasn't made harder getting the transistion from the paint to the tile trim spot on?

Would the guy who put the false metal track ceiiling up care about spacing his supports out to allow for where all the LED main lights and accent lights were going to fall, or for that matter the ceiling speakers? Or would the electrican have to jiggle everything around because somethings in his way?

Again on this wall, would the tiler spend the time with the plumber to ensure perfect plactment of the shower valve so it fell in the center of a tile height wise? also the setting out of the tiles that allows the custom made shower screen with recessed channel so that only 2 or 3mm of the channel is visable and that the top of the glass ends on a grout line? again another recess that falls perfectly in the center of a grout line. Would the plumber go to the trouble of setting the bath height perfectly so it didn't cause the tiler setting out issues? same with the placement of the toilet, the vanity unit, the mirror so it's perfectly central to the tile that is cut up to the recessed shower channel?

Same thing in this shower room in the same property, The shower valve falls perfectly on centered grout lines, taking in to account the need to be offset so that the shower riser can be mounted centrally to the tray, another recess that takes in to account the tile setting out, would the sparky care where he placed the UFH controls so it fell perfectly on a grout line? The shower glass again finishing on a grout line. the mirror being central to the gap and central to a grout line. The lowered ceiling again taking in to account lighting, speakers, showerhead. The tiling that is cut an extra 3mm short to the floor so the amtico floor could be slid underneath and still leave a nice sized grout line to be siliconed. Again everything was reversed engineered with the tiling dictating where all items where placed.

It's easy to set out tiling so it centers on a window and maybe gives you nice cuts here and there but how about when that setting out has to take in to account 15+ different items? Not many tradesmen would give a rats arse that their part of the works took in to account all others trades work and making life easy for one another.

It takes 1 of 2 things...

Either a bathroom designer that produces very very detailed plans and highly skilled tradesmen that stick to those plans without fail (no easy shortcuts), that designer also has to have working knowledge of how things are installed and if the design can even be executed.

Or it takes a multi-trader that cares about every aspect of the job from start to finish and doesn't do things that makes another trades life a nightmare. As he IS the other tradesman


I'm sure the above just looks like any other bathroom to some but the technical aspects that have gone in to the design is much easier if one person is responsible for all of it... i.e a multi-traderrrr:rrr:


BTW I'm not saying the above couldn't be executed by a team of highly skilled tradesmen, i'm know it can be but i'm sick of hearing how nobody can be skilled in multiple trades. I've said it before, if all single trade guys where skilled then I never would have branched out, but as someone who cares about their work I often went round sorting out everyone elses crap:mad2:

 

[John Benton]

Cubica Blanco Rob?

 

[Colour Republic]

They are John

Cubica Blanco on the back bath wall and a plain matt tile on the other 2, I forget the name of them thought

The shower room is also porcelanosa too, Tissue Silver on the back wall and silk beige on the rest.

Pretty much 90% of the tiles I supply now come from either Porcelanosa or Designworks (Original Style's contract division), the other 10% comes from a local stone importer. Between the 3 of them I can pretty much find a tile the customer will like and covers most styles

 

[MTiler]

Im very busy, its gone a bit mad. Have work booked for January.

 

[Brian the Tile]

Very good , very nice , I also spend a lot of time sorrting everybody elses crap work out, and spend a lot of time on attention to detail, im a time served tiler thats whst I get paid to do , if it was easy most people would do the work themselves, thats is why I had to serve a apprenticeship of six years on little money to be a wall and floor tilerand I take pride in the work I do , unfortunately there are a lot of odd jobbers out there taking business off good tradesmen, and making a hash of people's houses , taking there money an running, chancers

 

[Colour Republic]

Very good , very nice , I also spend a lot of time sorrting everybody elses crap work out, and spend a lot of time on attention to detail, im a time served tiler thats whst I get paid to do , if it was easy most people would do the work themselves, thats is why I had to serve a apprenticeship of six years on little money to be a wall and floor tilerand I take pride in the work I do , unfortunately there are a lot of odd jobbers out there taking business off good tradesmen, and making a hash of people's houses , taking there money an running, chancers

I agree with some of what you say...

I don't agree that these people steal work off good tradesmen as I don't believe anybody is entitled to business. If you chose to be self-employed then it isn't enough to just be good at your trade. You're running a business so you have to be a good businessman and be able to sell your services.

Every customer I've ever had I've got because I educate them in an unbiased way, giving them all the information they need to make an informed choice. If I then don't get the job, then it is me that lost it because I didn't do enough, not because somebody stole it from me.

Multi-traders aren't the problem, crap tradesmen are. Be it a single trade or a multi-trader. I've gone through countless tradesmen, plumbers, sparks, carpenters, decorators. Every trade is littered with crap tradesmen, despite many of them only 'sticking' to their trade. It's taken years to build a team and even then when someone leaves it takes months/years to replace them with somebody else that is worthy of the trade they profess to excel in.

I can't even afford to be on the tools anymore, I spend so much time designing, sourcing, selling, admin... But still I have to be because I can't find enough good tradesmen who take real pride in their work.

At the begining of the year I seperated the kitchen side of the business out from the main general building company Broken Link Removed Getting the work is no problem but you try and find 4/5 local kitchen fitters that carry work out to a high standard. Carpenters are no good, yes they can cut wood and screw a few units to a wall but they don't understand how kitchens are fitted, kitchen fitting is a trade in itself and so many 'expert' kitchen fitters are used to fitting Howdens crap with no finese. I'm turning away so much work just because I can't find enough decent trademen to fullfil it.

As I say, multi-traders and odd jobbersaren't the problem, each trade needs to look at themselves first and get rid of the crap within before they start blaming it on someone else

JMO :lol:

 

[John Benton]

They are John

Cubica Blanco on the back bath wall and a plain matt tile on the other 2, I forget the name of them thought

The shower room is also porcelanosa too, Tissue Silver on the back wall and silk beige on the rest.

Pretty much 90% of the tiles I supply now come from either Porcelanosa or Designworks (Original Style's contract division), the other 10% comes from a local stone importer. Between the 3 of them I can pretty much find a tile the customer will like and covers most styles

Thought so, just started fixing those 59x33s in a kitchen on Friday I'm refurbing. Customer originally wanted white gloss metro along with white gloss slab doors, managed to persuade her to try something a bit different as the gloss white would have been just too bland everywhere and she has fallen in love with them. I'm fixing them portrait so we only have on vertical joint under units and no horizontal joints to be seen, I'll post pics when done

 

[area tiling]

Very busy here too Dave , working today as well , absolutely shattered and my knees are squealing ! Booked solid till the end of January !

 

[High Peak Tiling]

Also talking to the local tile places they are not breaking any pots neither

My suppliers dont seem rushed either. I am booked up till middle of November... after xmas was dead for a month for me last year, wonder if this year different.

 

[kaharrison9]

Roughly booked know till February.
I have turned some real nice jobs down as well.

 

[AMtek]

I think bathroom fitting can almost be classed as its own trade, a bathroom fitter might not be able to tile 200m of polished pork or fit a boiler and run the feeds, returns and rads or perfectly skim a big ceiling but if he's doing it day in day out he can change a suite, tile the walls and the floor and do all the prep work, BUT i think he should be able to tile with any tile and know what he's doing with it, be able to plumb with plastic or endex, be able to bend pipe properly and not use fittings everywhere. And like CR said if they are following on from them self they know exactly how everything needs to be done so that everything will fall right at each stage. It's not just plumbers, joiners and plasterers that make our lives hard work i bet we do just as much that makes the second fix for sparkies and plumbers hard work