Hello Everyone,
I need some advice! Here’s the scenario…
I have a 3 bedroom townhouse in Adelaide. It had some damaged tiles in the laundry (about 4-6 broken tiles) that needed to be fixed. My Property Manager sent me a letter advising “the size of the current tiles in this room are no longer made, hence a patch up or match up cannot be done.” Enclosed with this letter was a written quote from a tiler stating “Relay & grout tiles on laundry floor. Supply, lay & grout new tiles on toilet floor. Note: Tiles in toilet will not be the same as tiles in laundry”. My Property Manager suggested I phone the tiler to discuss this further.
I did ring the tiler and during that discussion he confirmed that he could not obtain tiles of the same colour or size. He therefore suggested that he should remove some tiles from the toilet area to put in the laundry so that the tiles were all the same in the laundry. He then said that he would retile the whole area of the toilet with new tiles. He said this would be the least expensive way to go about it as the toilet area is much smaller than the laundry. He even discussed tiles of similar colours vs contrasting colours. I advised him that he could use his own discretion as to what colour tile to use, but I approved the work as described above.
OK. So now the Property Manager has sent me a photo of the work. The tiler did indeed take tiles out of the toilet area to be put in the laundry… and the laundry looks fine. However what he has also done is put a block of ten tiles of a different colour in the toilet area next to the old colour of tile. I now have two different colours of tiles in the toilet and it looks terrible!!
I have not spoken to the tiler myself yet but my Property Manager has made contact. Apparently the tiler claims that I told him during the phone conversation that doing a patch up job was what I wanted and thus he delivered!!
It appears this boils down to his word against mine, despite the written quote and letter from the Property Manager.
This is sooo infuriating!! If I wanted him to do a patch up job (even though I was told this was not possible !) then why wouldn’t he just stick the mismatched tiles straight into the gap in the laundry without stuffing around with my toilet?!?!? Surely that would have been the cheapest option?!
Can anyone suggest any course of action I might take in order to fix the situation?
Any feedback at all would be appreciated.
Hi Omachi,
It is possible to paint tiles any colour you like with a special type of ’tile paint’. I am not sure if it is durable enough to use on a floor, but easy enough to find out from your local hardware or paint specialist.
Regards,Sharon
“I have not spoken to the tiler myself yet but my Property Manager has made contact. Apparently the tiler claims that I told him during the phone conversation that doing a patch up job was what I wanted and thus he delivered!!”
The first thing I would do in this case is talk to the tiler myself. If you explain clearly what the problem is, he may be reasonable enough to correct the problem- all he really needs to do is take the old tiles out of the toilet and replace them to match the new ones he laid, which is easily corrected and not a big deal.
I hope he sees that and will correct it for you without too much drama if his reputation is important to him.
If he does cause drama, perhaps just pay him a little extra for correcting the problem and then tell the property manager that you never want to deal with this tiler again, and the property manager may decide to give all business to another tiler.
The property manager is working and paid for by YOU, so they will have to deal with the tradespeople their clients are happy with.It’s not the best solution, but solved as quickly as possible instead of dragging this out and getting more upset about it. Have it corrected asap and forget about it.
Celivia
Hi Omachi,
You have a number of options depending on how much aggravation you want. Sorry Sharon, I would steer clear of tile paint particularly for high traffic floor areas. For the price you pay, you are better off with relaying tiles!
Option 1 would be not pay the guy as he hasn’t fulfilled his obligation of the quotation and get another tiler to do the toilet area. Can’t imagine it would cost too much considering the typical size of a toilet.
Option 2 – As Celivia stated call the tiler up and ask if he would be happy living with the job he did and see if you can reach a compromise.All this is assuming you havn’t paid him as yet. If you have, you would have to say you are likely to be out of luck!
good luck!
Don’t get me started on tilers. Brand new townhouse. I physically showed him 3 times how I wanted very expensive little tiles laid in the powder room. Guess what? Yup, laid the wrong way. I rang immediately I saw them, no worries he could fix immediately, only troublel was when he pulled them off and put them back they are all wobbly, which I didn’t really notice until after I paid him. Join in tiles over vanity in master bedroom vanity just didn’t line up with waterspout so I said I would pay him to redo them as I couldn’t live with this off-skew look. He hacked them off the wall, taking all the plaster with them and builder had to resheet the wall again. Then he said its not the tilers job to do the silicon waterproofing around vanities, baths shower corners etc. Had to pay the builder extra to do it. Master shower leaked after we moved in and I had everyone back to refix, plumber twice, shower screen guy twice, guess who had left holes in the grout which let the water in behind the tiles and poured down the wall and out the front of the shower. Did he bitch everytime I called him back, definitely wasn’t his fault. Finally fixed. But I feel like reporting him. I believe they have a tilers association, just crooked on it I paid him. Don’t think it would have been better if you had written it down for your tiler as I actually drew a pattern of how I wanted the feature tiles in the shower in another place for the tiler and he still got it wrong!
i would talk to the tiler myself and like others have said try and come up with a compomise.
id also like to suggest that if you have rental properties that you use your own tradies. Try and be more hands on and get people that either come highly recomended by people you trust, or someone you have used previously.
hope this helps
“It’s not how much money you make, It’s how you spend it that matters.”
Aspiring property developer
Giulio Taranto
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