I am just completing the renovation of both upstairs bathrooms, which involved gutting the two originals plus one bedroom. We also added a laundry room upstairs in the newly configured space. I used the contractor who had done my kitchen to beautiful effect 5 years ago.

The contract we signed at the beginning specified "tile work to plan", but the plan for tile was not totally worked out at that time, just that there would be tile on all floors and walls.

We laid these floors over radiant heat, which was in the plan from the beginning.

As it turned out, we did a really cool floor in the kids bath that involved 12 X 12's laid on the diagonal with rows of glass tiles in the grout lines. Definitely more labor time than a straightforward laying of 8 X 8's or something. Also, the contractors felt the step of laying a wet layer of something (cement? mastic? whatever its called, I forget) over the heat mats was needed to achieve a level surface due to the small tiles, which would not have been required for an easier tile choice. Full disclosure-- the blue glass tiles I used had 25% each of 4 colors--one of them being a solid white marble, not glass, and I did not like that for this use so I popped all the whites out, and then they had to glue a glass one in its place. Very meticulous for sure.

In the master bath we did sheets of 12 X 12 white hex's with black flowers randomly placed, and a black hex border.

Also required in their opinion a "wet" layer over the radiant heat mats. Meticulous installation, again for sure.

The laundry room was a bit involved too--black hex all over with a white "area rug". No radiant heat though.

Sizes of rooms:

kids bath (white 12 X 12 with glass tiles)- 60 sq ft

laundry room (black hex with "white hex rug")- 35 sq ft

master bath (white hex with black flowers and border) 90 sq ft total.

I am looking for a sense of reasonableness in the extra charges. I am a super fair (overly generous?) homeowner in all my dealings with these folks, who as I said I have used in the past. I definitely agree the tile choices I made required more time (I see that now, I did not think of that when making my choices) and so agree I should pay more. BUT, I think in retrospect, part of it was that my guys were inexperienced with these types of installations. They did alot of on the job training at my house, adding weeks to projected time, and therefore money.

They charged me for an extra 54 hours over and above what it would have taken to do all this square footage in simpler installations. So, this is not what they charged me for all this tile, its the extra.

Does that seem about right?

See other recent question from me about a grout job of questionable quality to see more evidence that in retrospect I may not have had the right guys for this job.

See pix here, and thanks for any feedback!

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