If I had a buck for every mea culpa column I've written, I'd have enough for a fancy-schmancy cocktail to calm my nerves. Here's yet another.
You may recall the saga of our main staircase carpet-runner installation that took five visits, three different people, and more than a week. Having just recovered from that, we were looking forward to phase two of our foyer transformation — what we thought would be a comparatively trouble-free tile installation.
I should know better. Why did I assume the next project would go smoothly just because the previous one didn't?
Fortunately, our installer, Gary, who subcontracts his services to Home Depot, has raised his craft to an art form. This job presented several obstacles, so his meticulousness came in handy.
Creating a diamond pattern and dealing with a curving staircase wall made tiling the foyer a major challenge. (ELIZABETH RAND-WATKINSON)
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Besides two pesky dogs, he had to contend with a fairly long curved wall, the fact that we wanted the square tiles installed on the diagonal, a sub-floor that inexplicably bulged upward in the middle, and a two-stone tile combo in which the white marble and black granite were slightly different thicknesses.
I don't actually spend a lot of time thinking up ways to make life miserable for people. Besides wanting a "diamond" pattern, the rest of the challenges were not my doing, and I did try to keep the hounds at bay. Okay, we could have chosen tiles that were the same thickness, but let's not get too persnickety. Suffice to say, if you're planning a tile installation you may be facing similar issues, so it helps to be aware of their potential impact in advance.
For example, laying square tiles on the diagonal and meeting up with a curving wall will add cost and time because of the extra measuring, re-measuring, cutting and re-cutting involved. And that's before the curving baseboard and quarter-round are reinstalled.
And, just like you often can't know what lurks behind your walls, you may not know the true condition of your sub-floor until you remove the existing flooring and apply a level to it. A floor that bulges in the middle like ours forces you to build up the lower ends with deeper layers of mortar, and that means paying added attention to detail — and extra time as well. You better hope you have an installer who is up to the task or you may end up with cracking tiles down the road.
Additional lessons not exactly learned but painfully reinforced involved the tiles themselves. As I said, we were using white marble and black granite tiles. On the morning the work began, I had to be in Toronto for the day so didn't have time to inspect the tiles, which arrived with Gary. I also didn't ask hubby, who was busy with other things, to check them.
I usually advise clients to have a close look at each tile with their contractor before installations begin. That way you can ensure they are the style and colour you ordered and catch defects up front.
I've worked with contractors who buy twice or three times as much tile as is required in order to sort through the boxes and select the best specimens, returning the rest for a refund.
This can work if the tiles are an in-stock item but not necessarily if they're a custom order. In that case, ask the store if you can order extra boxes and explain why. Many stores will have restocking charges for the return of custom orders. If so, it's your call as to whether the added fee is worth it.
When I arrived home at the end of the first day and saw the progress, I was really taken aback at how grey the white marble tile looked. It was the tile we'd ordered, but the sample I'd seen in the store had much less veining and therefore looked a lot whiter.
If I'd been home, I'd probably have halted the work until I could assure myself no whiter tiles were available from Home Depot's in-stock supply. As it was, I was too late in discovering it to do anything without incurring extra cost and time.
I've since gotten used to the grey and, to make it look like it was planned all along, we may add a co-ordinating accent wall colour, but I kick myself for not being more on the ball.
Then came the second issue. Once Gary had finished installing all the tile and removed the spacers in preparation for grouting, he wiped each tile down with a wet cloth and discovered — horrors — four tiles with defects — namely, small whitish spots in the black granite. Again, this could have been caught on day one.
The only solution was to remove those tiles by cutting them out of their mortar bed and installing new ones. The final grouting was delayed until those four new tiles were installed and had time to set. This delayed the project several more days as Gary has had to move on to other projects elsewhere and come back to our job later.
After the job was completed, a fine dust, created by the cutting out of the defective tiles, covered every surface on our main floor. And with dogs and people having tracked the dust into every other space in the house and the wonderful woman who helps me keep this place clean vacationing in sunny Monaco, I faced a major cleanup.
It will take me more than a week to get the house back into shape.
It was yet another of the inconveniences I could have avoided if I'd only done as I preach. On the upside, I now have enough saved up for that fancy-schmancy cocktail. There's nothing like it to ease the pain of yet another mea culpa.
What it cost
- Materials (tile, grout, subfloor plywood, hardwood edging) — $1,236
- Labour — $2,072
- Aggravation — deserved
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