Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Tiler

We had a meeting with the tiler tonight.
A young guy who seems keen to do a good job. he suggested mitre joins for tile corners. He also explained how he preferred to finish off tiles by sanding cut edges rather than flipping tiles to keep cut tiles looking good and discussed the pro's of having a 4 way slope in tiles to the shower drains as being more efficient. So our shower based will be tiled in a diamond pattern. He explained about sealing the shower joins after cleaning with appropriate coloured sealer. etc. We'd explained that in the current rental someone had sealed the grout with something to match the floor grout or had used floor grout colour ( brown) in the joining edge of the entire wall section with the rest of the grout being cream. phew .. he's not going to do that. we've agreed to pay the additional $25 dollars per shower for this as we think it's a better idea and to pay the additional cost for mitre joins on tiles. ( approx an extra 200-220)
He said it would normally take him about 2 1/2 weeks but with easter he expects it will be about 3 weeks. he also said something about it usually being about 2 months from when he finishes work 'til hand over. arghh
Hopefully not that long.

Also finished: Our garage hardstand floor has been poured and the kitchen granite is in. :)

The granite is very dusty of course but I am thrilled with it.




This is it with our black splashback tiles. they are very shiny . I couldn;t get a good photo to show it. But they are completely smooth plain ceramic tiles. We wanted the granite to be the feature not the splash back.


The red arrow is pointing to the join in the granite. From standing height it's not that visible but up close it is.

5 comments:

BelleBeau said...

Oooh I LOVE your granite benchtops. They look stunning. The simple black tiles for the splashback is a great idea, not to take away from the granite.

Don't follow about the tiling in the shower, perhaps it's me. Is it costing you an extra $220 per shower to get it tiled in the diamond pattern? Seems a bit pricey to me?

cheers
J

kexkez said...

In stead of the floor in teh shower area being tiled squarely he's going to tile it in a diamond pattern so he can slope the tiles down towards the drain from 4 directions evenly. It means there's less likely to be any spots where the water wants to pool. Both ways are ok. But for an extra 25 per shower he'll cut the tiles so it slopes from 4 directions instead of the standard sloped tiles, squared off . this means the entire shower base areas will be a diamond pattern rather than the standard square pattern you get on the rest of the bathroom floor. At first I wasn't too sure but I would like to have the best '"fall" in the showers towards the drains as possible seeing as we don't have a hob in the ensuite. We decided we'd have the main shower tiled the same way rather than have them looking different from each other. The rest of the additional money is for mitred tiles for the hob in the main bathroom, around the bath and for the outer walls of the ensuite shower where it comes out into the bathroom section. Hard to explain but I knew what he meant. There was a big discussion about mitred tiles around baths on H1 a couple of months ago. It's so that none of the unglazed tile edges show.

Kek said...

Love the granite, it's gorgeous!

We have our shower bases tiled in the diamond pattern, at the tiler's suggestion. Apparently some people don't like it because "the tiles don't line up with the wall tiles" (seriously?) - but it looks fine. And more importantly, it drains really well. The shower base dried very quickly, no water left standing at all, unlike the old polymarble bases we always had in our other house.

kexkez said...

That's reassuring kek, I admit I was imagining it all lining up so was a bit taken aback when he first suggested it and so was hubby but once he explained, it all made sense.

Given that our ensuite shower has no hob and is double size, knowing it will drain well is a good feeling.

BelleBeau said...

Thanks Kexkez, that makes more sense now! Sounds like the diamond pattern is definitely the way to go. I hate water sitting at the bottom of the shower. Wonder if we will get this option wiht our tiler?

Good idea about the mitred edges, it never occurred to me that you would have unglazed areas with a normal cut. The amazing things I learn on other people's blogs!!!

Cheers
J