Contractor Tiling Issues: What is accceptable?
I'm posting here in the hope that we can get some hive-mind help with deciding what to do moving forward on our kitchen renovation with a challenging relationship with the GC.
Our kitchen floor steps down to a mudroom and we originally contracted this guy to do the kitchen remodel and flooring in both rooms. Some red flags appeared, so we decided to tell him that we wanted to wait to do the mudroom and just get the kitchen done. But remember, he knows we want to tile both rooms continuously with the same tile.
Here are some pictures of the stair and some other areas that we think indicate poor craftsmanship. There are more issues, but this is representative. Are they as awful as we think? Should we try to salvage it? Has anyone been in a similar situation? We do not trust this guy's judgment.
It’s been long enough that we cannot return anything and they used 25% over on the kitchen tile and 12 of our 21 bullnose tiles when they should have used 6 or 7. He put 6 of the exact same tiles going in the same direction in the main part of the floor right next to or within one or two tiles of each other and several other Siamese-twin tiles were found. I sourced this tile after researching rectified porcelain tile for ease of installation, quality, and aesthetic variance—and advised him that this tile came with a huge variety of different patterns. The tile is now sold out and we don’t have enough left over to be sure of covering the mudroom without running out—especially if we use more to fix some of the apparent problems.
Any advice or experience that you can share could help us decide what to do. Thanks!
This was his solution to the stair to the mudroom that someone else would have to deal with to make work for both rooms. He did not plan on doing anything below the tile. He tiled on top of the trim and even some air. He knows we want to tile this whole stair.
Comments (13)
Kevin Doherty
2 years agoWe're also curious about the adhesion of the tiles. Here's one of the popped tiles.
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2 years agoKevin Doherty
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoWe had 3 National Tile Contractors Association-certified installers weigh in on this floor and they were unanimous in their "unfit" assessment. The first gentleman who came was crowned “Rockstar” installer at Coverings, the industry’s annual trade show a few years ago. Without prompting, he called out the underlayment as the main reason the floor will fail. The other two viewed the floor via video and still pics and said the same. One remarked that the contractor is doing everything “on the cheap,” and “nobody has used Durock for this purpose since 1979.”
We asked the first installer if he thought the floor could be salvaged and if he wanted the job and he suggested we go back to tongue-and-groove flooring—it would be more expensive and time-consuming to properly prepare the floor for tile. So that’s what we’re doing. We lucked out into an amazing wood floor company with a 5-star reputation and a slot we could squeeze into.
These first new pics are indicative of badly adhered ceramic tile. Ideally, you want 90% of the trowel ridges to flatten out. Most of the tiles did just pop right off. I’ll add more to this thread because it might help someone else identify problems before they become so expensive and stressful. [ https://youtu.be/roVqR--taAM ] [ https://youtu.be/2z5UbWawBAY ]
Kevin Doherty
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