Setter’s tile mistake tough to correct
Q: I’m having a small bathroom remodeled. My wife and I did our due diligence and thought we hired a great contractor. I came home from work to discover the back of the ceramic wall tile is floating above the adjacent wall by almost a half-inch. The contractor says the tile setter is going to fill the gap to make it go away. Is this normal? I’ve never seen the tile sit higher than the adjacent walls. What could we have done to prevent the issue, and should the tile be torn out and redone? — Chris C., Washington, D.C.
A: The photo you sent made me cringe. That’s got to be the worst tile mistake I’ve ever seen. Shame on the contractor for trying to cover up for poor workmanship.
Professional tile setters know to make sure that the base they put their tile on is flush with the adjacent finished wall surface.
Most builders and remodelers use halfinch drywall on the walls in bathrooms. The manufacturers of the tile backer boards, whether it’s cement board or waterproof gypsum-core backer board, make their products the same thickness so the back side of the tile sits just about inch or inch above the surface of the drywall after the tile is installed.
This small gap is created by the compressed thickness of the organic mastic or the cement thin-set used to attach the tile to the backer board. The gap is easily filled with the tile wall grout and it looks great once complete.
At this point, you can remove the tile and start over, but that is going to be very painful. Or the contractor may be able to install an additional layer of drywall on the existing drywall to bring the wall flush with the tile.
Here’s how you might have prevented the error. You could have downloaded from the internet lots of detailed photos of exactly how you expected everything to look once the job was complete. Or, you may have taken lots of photos from model homes you visited over the years. I’m talking about close-up photos of details of tile work, door trim miter joints, baseboard details where it meets flooring, backsplashes and so forth.
These photos should have been part of the bid package plans and specifications so each contractor would know the level of quality needed. The photos should also have been part of your written contract so you could use them to withhold payments until the work met your expectations.
Few people take the time to do this, but it pays huge dividends to those homeowners who refuse merely to hope everything works out.