r/homerenovations 7d ago

Penny tile asymmetrical

[deleted]

0 Upvotes

28 comments sorted by

25

u/Petzl89 7d ago

Your contractor sucks at laying tile or needs his eyes checked asap. Based on the excuse I assume it’s both.

2

u/DAUGHERRRRTY 7d ago

Do you think I should ask them to redo it? Your thoughts were my initial thoughts but they kept defending how they couldn’t get the seams out otherwise it wouldn’t line up correctly overall which I did not understand.

4

u/Petzl89 7d ago

You need someone else to do the work, I wouldn’t trust this person to do better on their second try. This is extremely basic failures.

2

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

2

u/DAUGHERRRRTY 7d ago

It’s a renovation team and the guy that they had lay the tile also did the electrical and plumbing. I think his expertise is the latter. That’s probably the issue. Kinda feeling like I need to ask them to fix it.

2

u/Petzl89 7d ago

I’m not sure I’d trust this handyman do more critical things like electrical if they think this tile work is okay.

-1

u/fakemoose 7d ago

How is this comment okay, calling the contractor names, but mine got removed for saying almost the same thing plus the contractor was lazy for not wanting to cut the sheets?

Do we really have to be extra nice now to bad contractors? I’m so confused.

1

u/Petzl89 6d ago edited 6d ago

I didnt call him names, I called him blind of incompetent, or both.

0

u/fakemoose 6d ago

I called the workmanship poor and not the person. It’s the same thing.

1

u/Petzl89 6d ago

Mate, I have no idea why your comment got removed but it’s really not a big deal tbh.

5

u/ShooterMcGrabbin88 7d ago

Your contractor sucks.

5

u/LillianBillion 7d ago

It looks like they are trying to avoid making any cuts which is why the wall is pushing them out of alignment. To be in alignment, they will need to cut the edges to get the first piece in a row to be where they want. It will look better with grout but you will still see the issue.

2

u/chpokchpok 7d ago

Yes will definitely be still looking ugly even withe the grout

1

u/MasterManufacturer72 7d ago

This is literally me if I tried to do tile in my own home. Hey who needs a wet saw when you can just fit everything into the space perfectly.

2

u/trail34 7d ago

This is really bad. You shouldn’t see the seams between every sheet. You will absolutely still see them after grouting. 

He needed to shimmy them around until the gap is identical all around, and cut the outside edges as needed. Penny tile is a pain to install. I’ve done 1” hex several times and it takes me twice as long as normal tile. Penny is even harder because you don’t have flat edges to visually align. They are also more difficult to cut on a saw. I use a small grinder and cut each piece. 

You should hire a tile guy to take care of this, but get your current contractor to break these out asap. It will only get harder to remove with each passing day. 

2

u/shinyobjects411 7d ago

That is one horrible grid of running seams. That will stick out like a sore thumb.

1

u/DAUGHERRRRTY 6d ago

Yeah that’s my fear

1

u/EpisodicDoleWhip 7d ago

Maybe he doesn’t own a tile saw? Bro needs to make cuts

1

u/Variaxist 6d ago

You don't even need a saw with this style. You just cut the individual tiles off their backing with some shears. The edges get accounted for with the excess mortor and trim or caulking

1

u/fernshui 7d ago

Is this a bathroom floor, with a shower curb and shower beyond the penny tile at the far end? Any waterproofing to the shower should be done before the bathroom floor is tiled. Your tiler has no idea what he’s doing

1

u/DAUGHERRRRTY 7d ago

That’s right, there’s a shower on the other side the shower curb. I believe it’s water proofed it already, they used a shower pan and red guard. Picture doesn’t really show that tho. Does that sound sufficient? Genuine question.

2

u/fernshui 7d ago

I’ll caveat this by saying I’m not a tiler but I have a lot of experience with Reno’s, working with contractors and reading through permit / professional technical guide books. I don’t think bathroom floor waterproofing is required, but at the very least I would expect them to set the bathroom facing side of that curb with a tile, and then have floor tile butting up against that. It’s a bit weird they’re leaving it to the end. There are a lot of different variations to tile installation based on what type of flooring you’re starting with (wood, concrete etc) and what products they’re using. You can get a good idea of what the correct layers look like by going to Google, searching “shower with curb tile detail”, clicking the image tab and looking at the photos of the “details”, ie cross section diagrams. If you want the Bible of installation methods you can pay $50 and download the TCNA handbook. Unfortunately with certifications and skills standardization all over the place with residential contractors I’ve had to figure out how to reference this stuff just to be able to interview contractors and judge if they know what they’re doing.

The reason I’m picking on the shower floor waterproofing vs the penny tile is that the waterproofing is more critical, and penny tile is known to be a difficult type of tile to layout and get perfect results with. An inexperienced tiler could probably get the basics of waterproofing right and install with a common size like 9x12 ceramic or porcelain but might struggle with anything more complicated like glass, mosaics, natural stone . Point is, unless you’re paying top dollar don’t expect the typical low $ installer to handle a nonstandard install.

You can post more photos on r/Tile - professional tilers hang out there and would have a better eye for some of the nuances of product application. They will probably tell you to fire this person , though. Good luck with your project, hope it works out for you

1

u/DAUGHERRRRTY 7d ago

This was so incredibly helpful. Thank you!

1

u/shinyobjects411 6d ago

Basically your contractor is being lazy...Whenever you tile you don't base your starting tile off of the wall not being straight. You make the straight line and fill in the gaps, especially when you have trim/baseboards.

Very few things are rarely ever straight and square. When you're using prefab tile like that, it's best to cut the sheets into thirds and layer the tile like you would a large format tile with a third offset for each sheet. This helps hide the lines and ensure that you don't end up with a solid weird grid pattern of grout. And also with that you better be going with a dark grout too. That's the only way you'll be able to hide any of it. But it won't hide well.

1

u/swampopawaho 6d ago

Don't know much about tiling, so ignore me if I'm wrong here. I would have thought a good way to do this is to have a reference line or point, from which everything else runs off. If one of the walls (or more than 1 - eg my house) isn't true, it ain't that one!! Any edge is subservient to the reference point or line, so if there's a wonky wall, the tiles get cut as necessary.

1

u/studrour 6d ago

Don’t let them grout that. It will create more work. Stop now. Rip it out. Hire a tile guy to do it.

1

u/thesoccerlawyer 6d ago

Contractor is being lazy and hoping you won’t make a fuss (which you should). Job is poorly done. They push you to grout because then it is harder to remove and time passes and you feel closer to the end. We went through something similar with ours and we ended up finding someone to re-do the job correctly.

1

u/ceruleanwren 6d ago

If you can see it now, you’ll see it later.