Has this been done right?

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hillsgal

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I'm having some work done on my house and I'm worried that the guys doing it aren't doing a great job, but I'm not an expert at these things and any time I query anything they have a very ready excuse/explanation which could be fair enough but could also be total rubbish! I'm hoping someone on here could give me their opinion, as I don't want to be an unreasonable person who complains about things that can't be helped, I appreciate that in older houses there are always problems and things can't always be perfect, but I'm becoming more and more worried that they're cutting corners and fobbing me off because they think I won't know any better. Here are my concerns:
1. When the old tiles were taken off one of the bathroom walls, it turned out that the plaster underneath was very old and all came away with the tiles (it basically crumbled as soon as it was touched). This wasn't unexpected - the tiles had been up a very long time and I'd had no idea of the quality of the plaster underneath. It's a lat and plaster wall, so they fixed some plasterboard onto the section where the old tiles were and left the rest of the wall as it was. They've put the new tiles straight over the plasterboard, and several people have said to me (including a neighbour who used to be a bathroom fitter) that it should really have been skimmed first - is this right?
2. We also wanted the tiles to go right up to the ceiling rather than just partway up like the old ones did, and they've put the new tiles straight onto the old plaster despite it obviously being in really poor condition. I was surprised by this and queried it, but they said there was no reason not to do this. OK, or not?

3. When they first fixed the tiles to the wall, we noticed a fairly obvious bulge partway up the wall over the plasterboard, and another section at the side and top (over the old plaster) which was so far out from the wall I could stick my finger behind it - when we spoke to the tiler about this, he said that it was because the wall underneath wasn't completely flat (this being the wall that they'd fixed plasterboard onto) and talked about old houses with lat & plaster walls being impossible to tile without there being some bulges. He also said that as we'd chosen small tiles (15x15cm) this made it impossible to tile over an uneven wall without there being any bulges - although he hadn't said anything like this to me when I told him what tiles I was thinking of getting and asked if they'd be OK. I appreciate that walls in old houses aren't always flat, but the quote they gave me included making sure all walls were suitable for tiling - surely if the wall they'd fixed plasterboard to still wasn't flat, they should have done something about that before tiling it??

If anyone can offer their thoughts, that'd be great.

We eventually got him to agree to re-do one small area (12 tiles) at the bottom of the wall where the tiles are built out so far
 
they sound like chancers............hope this helps & maybe you need the tilers forum
 
Cowboys.the wall should be made flat whatever it takes.if it was a proper job they should have boarded it entirely or stripped off the old dodgy plaster and render and re-done it.if it was my house I would skim the board first as well,when the tiles come off the wall will be shite again.and was the plasterboard moisture check as it should be.all sounds a poor job.
 
Preparation should of been done before hand to make sure the Walls were suitable for tiling. Any one that knows their job would see that the wall wasn't flat and at least point it out to you with the options of either sorting it out or discussing what your expectations are with regard to the finished job. Difficult to say without seeing the job but it doesn't sound great from how you've described it.
 
Oh dear - I was hoping everyone was going to tell me that it all sounds fine and to stop worrying! I'm supposed to be paying these guys over £3k for the total amount of work they're meant to be doing on my house (I had a number of quotes and they were all around this amount) and there are a few things as well as this that I'm not happy with, but everything that I've queried with them has been met with a lot of fairly reasonable-sounding excuses that it's difficult for me to argue against when I'm not an expert in any of this. What on earth do you do when the things you're not happy with are things that have been completed and would have to be all ripped down and done again from scratch to make them right, and the guys doing them say there's no way they can be done any better anyway??

I did get the tiler to agree to redo one section of the bathroom wall (I mentioned this at the bottom of my first post but for some reason it only posted part of the sentence I'd written), but then when I came home yesterday the whole wall had been grouted and nothing had been redone, so I'm going to have to speak to them about that but at this stage I'm really not sure what they can do about it short of taking off all of the tiles and doing the whole thing again - and I can't imagine they're going to be very willing to do that!

This whole thing is becoming a bit of a nightmare, the work has been going on for 2 weeks now and we're already really fed up of the whole house being a mess, so I'm really quite upset that it seems like they're not doing a great job on it either. Does anyone have any advice on how I should deal with this in a way that's reasonable but will result in everything being done well and to my satisfaction?
 
You need to at least speak to them and voice your concerns. Can you get somebody else to take a look at the work independently when they are not there and give you a second opinion, as by your own admission you are not an expert. As warrior says there are two sides to things, there are some people and I'm not implying that this is the case here that do expect a miracle from things and it just can't be done. (no offence, but it does happen)

If you have agreed with him to re do some of the tiling and it hasn't been done then that in itself is taking the Mick.
Can you post some pictures on here . . .??
Hope this helps
 
I definitely want to make sure I'm not being unreasonable in what I expect from them - I can absolutely understand that some customers will expect miracles, and it must be awful to have worked hard on something and then have the customer act like you've done a rubbish job on it. I've always been very polite when I've pointed out things I think are wrong to them, but I made it clear from the start that if there's likely to be a problem with something then it's fair enough but that they need to speak to me about any issues in advance so we can try and find a solution that I'm happy with and unfortunately they haven't really done this, they've just gone ahead with things and then when I speak to them about it afterwards they tell me it was impossible to do any other way, and I don't know whether that's true or whether they're just fobbing me off. I've never had anything like this done before and although I know a certain amount about DIY stuff, I'm obviously not as experienced as someone who does it for a living. It's also difficult to get a second opinion once something has been done, because whoever looked at it wouldn't be able to see the wall underneath to comment on whether the job has been done well or not. I would post photos but it's not really possible to see most of the bulges in the tiles in a photo - I'll see what I can do when I get home tonight though.
I've sent him an email (I can't phone from work so it's the only way to contact him during the day) explaining my concerns and saying that I've been told by a number of people that the wall should really have been skimmed and made level before tiling. We'll see what he says!
Thanks everyone for your comments, you're really helpful!

NRM2007 said:
You need to at least speak to them and voice your concerns. Can you get somebody else to take a look at the work independently when they are not there and give you a second opinion, as by your own admission you are not an expert. As warrior says there are two sides to things, there are some people and I'm not implying that this is the case here that do expect a miracle from things and it just can't be done. (no offence, but it does happen)

If you have agreed with him to re do some of the tiling and it hasn't been done then that in itself is taking the Mick.
Can you post some pictures on here . . .??
Hope this helps
Click to expand...
 
Skimming the wall would not make it level, it only goes on at approx 2mm thickness and is purely to provide a decorative surface eg paint paper.. skimming is unecccesary before tiling. however i agree that some effort should have been made to straighten/ flaten the wall before tiling with bonding plaster, any good tiler should do this as amatter of course to make his job easier, its all about the prep work.
 
Going off what you've said in your reply it sounds like they are taking the Mick. As said before tell them your concerns and give them chance to make it right, if not then tell them to go. Don't forget that not only are they making a mess of things alot of money will be spent on materials which are now useless should it need to be re done, and someone will have to pay for them.
 
First of all do not pay them any money until you are happy with the work . take photos of everything they have done or are doing as before and after evidence . Voice any concerns you have with them and give them chance to put anything you are not happy with right. If you are still not satisfied with the situation and the standard of work being carried out ask them to stop and explain the situation to them. Then go to trading standards and ask there advice on what is the best course of action to take . keep a record of all things ie hours they have worked ,receipts for all mats ,photo's of work and any other sort of evidence in case it has to go to court.
 
If you've had the job priced to go over existing they've done what's agreed you should have had the option of making the walls completely flat but the builder would price for this accordingly
 
Spunky - the quote I was given was for removing the old tiles, making sure the wall was suitable for retiling, and then retiling it. As the plaster came down with the old tiles, they added on the cost of plasterboarding over the lats, so I'd have expected them to make sure they did this so that the wall was flat enough to tile properly - or at the very least told me that there was likely to be an issue so I could have decided what I wanted to do about it.

Anyway, this tale has a happy ending. I sent a polite but firm email to Kitchenandbathroomman this morning regarding the quality of bathroom tiling, telling him that I'd had a second opinion from several people (you guys count as a second opinion, I'm sure!) who'd agreed that it didn't seem like they'd done a very good job. I didn't hear a peep from him all day, then returned home to find absolutely nothing changed in the house except for two tiles I'd never seen before propped on the side of the bath. I wondered if he'd been horribly offended by my email and that this was the tiling equivalent of giving us the finger, but the mystery was solved when he phoned me later this evening. Kitchenandbathroomman now appears to think I'm Crazy Tile Lady and is slightly afraid of me. He is going to remove all of the bathroom tiles, purchase replacement tiles out of his own pocket, and redo the whole lot. Success! He did have the cheek to say I should have said earlier that I wasn't happy with the tiling - when I did say this as soon as I saw the tiles, but his tiling guy basically argued me down and refused to accept that there was anything wrong with them and until I spoke to people who know more about it than I do, I didn't know whether what he was telling me was true or not.

Anyway, I was also amused to hear that Kitchenandbathroomman's sidekick, Stroppy Tiling Boy, is no longer going to be involved in this project. I'm guessing that either he's got in a big huff and refused to do any more work for someone with such unreasonable expectations as wanting non-wonky tiles, or else Kitchenandbathroomman has realised the error of his ways and no longer trusts his sidekick with my tiling. Either way, someone else is going to be redoing the bathroom and doing the kitchen tiling, and they're only going to do the kitchen at a time when I'm around so that they can make sure I'm happy with it as they go along.
Very glad we've managed to resolve this, and thank you so much for all of your advice!
 
No he's there to put tiles on the wall why would he know he turns up to work nd gets on with it, if its lath plaster with a big chunk of board in the middle you'd imagine some efforts been made just a **** spec
 
If I turned up at a job and the plaster boarding that had been done for me was shite I would either tell them it is not good enough to plaster or make them fully aware of what they are going to have to expect the end results to be and get something in writing saying they are happy to proceed. It's no different for the tiler in my opinion. At the end of the day I won't compromise on my standards of work for no body because it's my reputation at stake.
 
Just to clarify - I hired one guy to be in charge of the work (he is self-employed and mainly does plumbing & fitting cupboards etc), and part of his role is to get people in to do any jobs he can't. The guy who did the tiling is not just someone who came in for one day, tiled a wall that someone else had prepared and then left again - he and the main guy took out everything in the old bathroom, fixed plasterboard to the wall, and then he tiled over it. He was there from the start and was partly responsible for making sure the wall was suitable for tiling as the agreement from the beginning was that they would make the walls suitable for tiling before doing them.
I'm having a pop at him because he had plenty of opportunities to speak to me about any issues with the walls or with the tiles I'd chosen and warn me in advance that it might not be possible to get them completely flat. I made it clear from the beginning that I understand it's not always possible to have everything the way you want when you have an old house, but that I want them to discuss any problems with me so I can either spend more money to get it sorted, or choose to accept anything that might not be quite right, but instead he went ahead and did what most people on here seem to think was not a very good job, and then became extremely rude and unco-operative when I (extremely politely and reasonably) pointed out the bulge in the tiling, and basically refused to consider doing anything about it. Clearly it's possible to do a better job, otherwise the guy in charge (who wasn't there at the time I spoke to the guy who did the tiling) would not be saying that they'd remove the tiles and do the whole thing again at his own expense.
I'm sorry if I've given the impression that I'm having a go at someone about something that isn't their fault - obviously I hadn't explained the situation clearly enough.
 
Sounds to me like you've been more than fair, at the end of the day if they just carry on regardless and it looks a mess then they have only themselves to blame and deserve all they get as far as I'm concerned. Too many people about who are more than happy to charge top dollar for sub standard work.
 
Spunky - haha, thanks! I don't want to seem like I'm being unreasonable, I think I just hadn't made it clear that the same guy had been responsible for making sure the wall was ready to tile, and then tiling it.

Today's update - nothing happened over the weekend in the bathroom, but the new guy came in and did tons of work in the kitchen including a fantastic job of the tiling so he's my new hero - especially after the guy who did the bathroom had said it would be totally impossible to get the border tiles straight in the kitchen, and that a section at the end of the wall which curved slightly couldn't be tiled either and would have to be boxed in somehow to make it flat! Anyway, I was expecting him back this week but nobody came round yesterday at all and then the main guy & the original tiler turned up at 6.45am this morning and said they were going to do the bathroom today. They explained some complicated idea where they were going to put the new tiles over the top of the tiles they were meant to be taking down, because apparently this would give it a better finish. I was not convinced. I ended up saying that I didn't want this guy doing any more tiling for me, since he doesn't seem to have any confidence that he could do a better job on it this time, and they went away again. No idea what's going on in my house now as I had to go to work!!
 
Tiling on top of tiles? I'm not a tiler but but I'd say that's a cowboy job 'cos they're too lazy to take the old ones off.
If a plumber mate of ours does any tiling (and he's a fantastic tiler) and see the walls are out of plumb by any degree he'll get in touch with us to sort them out for him.
Reputation is hard to earn but easy to loose.
 
Absolutely - I'm pretty certain that they were only wanting to do that because they didn't want to spend the time taking off the tiles that had been done badly, and also because they'd fixed those tiles straight onto plasterboard, they were worried that the plasterboard would come off with the tiles and have to be redone as well.

I'm glad I'm a pretty confident person, cos it wasn't easy telling someone to his face that I didn't trust him to do a good job and didn't want him to do any more work in my house. I just hope someone decent ends up doing it because this work has been dragging on for ages now and I just want it over and done with. I'm getting a bit paranoid that other things have been done badly as well, but that they're not obvious like the tiles so I don't know about them! I'm already unhappy about some things they've done with the chimney breast and a space where the fireplace used to be, I'd get a second opinion but everything has been plastered over so I don't know what I can reasonably do about it now. Thanks again for all your words of advice, it's helped a lot!
 
spread1970 said:
for what its worth it is possible to tile on tiles,a pva type of glue is applied,then 24hrs away ya go.
Click to expand...
I've seen it done so yes it is possible but if (going by what's been said alone), if it has been done wrong in the first place then I'd want it ripping off and doing again.
 
As I expected, I got home last night to find that they'd started taking the tiles off, the plasterboard underneath had started coming off with it, and they'd given up. I'd guess this is the point where I spoke to them and they tried to convince me that the end result would be much better if they tiled over the first set of tiles...

Apparently he's getting someone else to come in and do it at the weekend. I'm just hoping it's the same guy who did a fantastic job on the kitchen.
 
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