Bathroom Nightmare - PLEASE HELP!!!!
I am having a small bathroom renovated. The walls are concrete and plaster. The contractor promised he could straighten the walls which needed work as I was concerned by the condition of the walls before the job was started. The tiling is more than 1/2 done. The tiles look straight but they are actually about 1/4″ off the wall and set on thinset. Contractor said that this is what needs to be done to have straight tiles because walls are wavy. We are going half way up the wall and up to the ceiling in the tub so there is bullnose going around the walls at 48″ and up the sides of the tub. When the bullnose was applied, the space between the rounded edge of the bullnose and the wall is set, like the tile, 1/4 inch from the wall and is on a bed of thinset that is very visible. It looks funny to me although it is not grouted yet. Will having a thick backing of grout down the road cause a problem with discoloration? Is this acceptable work when dealing with old concrete walls? My contractor is telling me that all is fine, of course but I’m not so sure. I also am feeling very intimidated. Please, please help as he will be back on Monday and wants to be out of my home by Tuesday!!!!!!
odyssey
in Construction 13 years and 10 months ago
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stevecym | 13 years and 10 months ago
Odyssey: I frequently work without signed contracts and when customers ask me if I need one I say, “what good is it? if we don’t deliver, we don’t get paid.” That said, I work for people who would never take advantage of someone and I have never ended up in court or been dragged before the Dept of Consumer Affairs. If a contractor is working without a signed contract, it is his weakness, not yours. Contractors are not supposed to work in NYC without signed contracts. if this ended up in the courts or before the DCA, he would lose. But let’s assume this will not go there. In his proposal, did he state that he would skim coat? Did he suggest it might have to be done verbally and then did not write it in the proposal? If that is the case, I would bring this up. If you ask him to skim coat and it was not agreed to, he has the right to ask for more money. It also may delay him a day or so and he might have someplace else to be – though I would be suprised if any contractor was ever on time with anything anyway. Try to be real nice to him, be flexible on the schedule, and ask him what it would take to get him to skim coat. Look, he is the contractor, not you. When we go into jobs it is up to us to spell out the pit falls and where something else may come up that may need to be done and how much that might cost. If skim coating would be the proper thing to do, and i am still not saying that it is – remember, I am not a tiler – you would want to find a way, nicely, to let him know it should have been done. Offer him a little more money (and if he is wrong and is a gentelman, he will not accept it – sometimes we have to do things at no charge to make a job right). If you do get him to skim coat, you will want to find out what kind of mortar should be used. I am not sure; whenever I have done tiling, I go to the tile store and tell them what I am doing and they tell me what to use. You may wish to do this – check with Classic Tile on 86th Street – whenever I have a question about tiling, that is who I go to and they give me very concise and sound advice with no BS. The reason I am telling you to find out what kind of mortar to use is, if you talk him into doing this and he feels like he is doing you a favor, he may just use some mortar he has lying around. You want him to purchase the mortar for this job. I hope this helps. Remeber, be nice with him and as tricky as this may get, do your best not to sound adversarial. Steve http://brownstoner.staging.wpengine.com/tinkerswagon
odyssey | 13 years and 10 months ago
This is a wonderful forum. I certainly do not want to badmouth contractors. I have found this contractor very hard to deal with. He gave the project 6 working days from start to finish and that is the time frame he wants to keep to. I have no prior experience with contractors and I don’t know how to handle the situation which is why I said that I feel intimidated. Skim coating would be perfect but something tells me the contractor is going to refuse. I’m not even sure of my rights here. He’s licensed but I’m ashamed to say that I was so naive that I have an unsigned proposal but no contract.
Rick | 13 years and 10 months ago
Tile can look rather rough before the grout is done. The thickness behind the bullnose will look much better once the tile is grouted. I would think this would be a small detail that should look okay. Since you did not gut the room this is a small compromise. Gutting the room would have been a really big deal, a big mess and a larger expense.
northofditmas | 13 years and 10 months ago
The old way was to ignore the wavy walls and vary the depth of the mortar. The new way is to start over with wonderboard. Starting over generates a HUGE amount of debris so there is something to be said for the old way. If your contractor promised level walls you can have him do a thick skim coat over the non-tiled areas. That won’t eliminate the gap but it will make it smaller and is a good compromise since he did commit to level walls. After a month you will never notice the grout line and a future buyer won’t either.
odyssey | 13 years and 10 months ago
Thank you for your responses. The contractor assured me that he would be able to level the walls so I am disappointed by the varying degree of thickness of thinset behind the bullnose. I might have tried a different approach – tile to ceiling, etc.) had I known. I guess I am going to have to accept what is.
bobjohn | 13 years and 10 months ago
I think the OP mentioned “plaster over concrete”. There is no studs. I am not sure if there is a point in removing plaster in this case. Alternatively you can put board on the thinset and attach tiles to the board. But good tiler can put tiles even enough without board just varying thinset thickness. OP states that tiles are leveled. So tiler knows what he is doing. I would not add badmouthing to contractor since the OP already hyperventilating.
brucef | 13 years and 10 months ago
If I understand your post, you are mostly concerned about the reveal that might be visible on the top edge of the tile, because your bullnose matching tile is no thicker than the wall tile. Oftentimes we install using European tiles that do not offer a matching bull nose. In these cases we use Schluter brand capping, available in both metal and plastic, in various colors. The Schluter trim pieces (they come in 6′ lenghts), have a perforated flange that you don’t see. that is embedded in the thinset behind the top tile. the rims come in various thicknesses, because they need to work with tiles of…different thicknesses. Years ago when we started, the Schluter “look” was hard to get used to, but now that’s all I use, in the bath, out of the bath, kitchens, backsplashes. So check the different profiles, and the Schluter cap justified to the rear, should completely hide, and give you a cleanable, finished look.
Rick | 13 years and 10 months ago
Walls should have been removed to the studs and replaced with Wonderboard. If you wanted perfection, that is the only way to go.
bullfrog | 13 years and 10 months ago
You don’t mention whether or not the walls were gutted to the studs (as they should have been) but I am assuming from your post that they were not. That in itself is a sign to me that the contractor is cutting corners. I know that many people install new tiles over the old tiles/concrete but that is just wrong in my opinion. It’s really only an extra day’s worth of work to gut everything, level the walls with new sheetrock and properly install the tiles.
stevecym | 13 years and 10 months ago
I am a contractor (a woodworker) and have done some tiling, but am not a tiler. Still, I will try to help you here. First, what a GC told me in respect to my own bathroom, is that all of the old concrete had to come out. That said, many people tile over old concrete and over old tile – it is probably not the best approach, but if budget is a concern, it may be acceptable. I think there would be two ways to deal with the uneven walls – either by putting mortar over them and letting it set or by using the thinset heavy in some places, as he did, and lighter in others, as needed. I have done this on small jobs that I have done and it has worked with success. I suspect that the thinset is very strong (I have often thought of it as modified with some bonding agents, but I may be wrong) and should hold fine. As for the gap at the top, once it is grouted, it should look better. I may be wrong on some of what I said above, so let’s wait and see what some real tilers have to say- Steve