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Bathrooms Building a Home

Tile shower - acceptable or no?

5 years ago

Fiancé and I are building a house. They just finished the tile shower and we noticed some uneven spots in the floor of the shower. Is this to be expected?? Or should we complain? I think it looks really bad, but I don’t know much about tile showers and if they are usually uneven like this.

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Comments (4)

User
5 years ago
That's tract builder standard looking tiling. If that is what you are buying, and it's properly waterproofed underneath, it's not going to get torn out.

If you own the property, and hired the builder, and picked everything out for your house, then you can expect a higher standard of quality.
Victoria Marie
Original Author
5 years ago
@greendesigns - thanks for the insight. Yes, it is a tract home. Our realtor said the same - that they may not tear it out, but recommended we ask for a credit on final purchase price so we can have it redone correctly in the future. The tile shower is not standard, we added it on as an option and it was an additional $3500.
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If your wall is level, it would then be the floor, wouldn't it? :) It appears that the ridges of the mortar weren't collapsed, which would result in a poor bond and less than the required 95% mortar coverage in a wet area. That's a fail, whether he thinks it's a big deal or not. The whiter floor tile looks the same as the one two away from it. Looks fine to me.
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Thank you @millworkman and @Kristin Petro, CKBD for your responses. Here are some photos. I tried to capture the issues but it's less obvious in photos than looking in person. This piece of cut tile is not the same width along the niche, and the cut itself is also not straight or smooth. The tiles are not flush. I know there is a bit of buckling on all tiles, but most of the pieces do not have this issue so I am pretty sure this could have been avoided The contractor said that he is not able to make the cuts so they are the same height across the top (he kept blaming the uneven ceiling and the shadow from the mud, etc., but I am just looking across the tile tops). Maybe the caulk will fix this, but I won't know till it's done. I am rather skeptical he is saying it's "impossible" to line up the tiles. It may be difficult or unnecessary, but to say it is not possible for someone who's done this for 10 years seems a bit unreal.
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Is this amount of standing water acceptable in shower?
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I think the line is just how the picture is taken with a shadow — I've attached a pic of that corner from a different angle. It's not the best grout job nor tile cutting job, but I have conceded on this or this shower will never be done. But now that there is a draininage issue it may still need to be fixed. In any case, after 5 hours the water is still there, sigh. The contractor complained about the large tiles but told me it will drain for sure when I asked about it during the installation, and now there is standing water. We will try it out and see if it keeps doing this, and if it does, I will definitely mention it to the owner of the company, who has been pretty good so far when I have raised issues. The guy doing the job is the one making a lot of excuses. Not to say this is true for all contractors, but this is the second experience in the last 2 years I've had with someone making excuses for a sub par job and blaming the issues on everything else but their own workmanship.
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Comments (7)
What you can expect is dependent on whether the tiles were flat to start with. If they are not dead flat, then the amount of lippage will depend on the layout as some patterns are a bit more forgiving. I presume you have some leftover tiles, and you could check them for flatness by placing them face-to-face or back-to-back to see if there are any gaps. While this should have been done before the tiling started, at least checking now will tell you if you have bowed tiles or a less-than skillful tiler. My master bath floor has 24" X24" tiles with a 3/32" grout line and the tiles were absolutely flat before being laid and display no lippage at all.
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PRO
Dragonfly Tile & Stone Works, Inc.
5 years ago
The uneven tile doesn't mean the shower will fail, which would be a much larger concern as green designs pointed out. If it was built to standards (it is what underneath that counts even more), then this is an aesthetic issue and probably not unusual for a tract home build, albeit not a professional outcome. So yes, you could ask for a credit, but remember that you cannot tear out a shower floor in the future without re-doing the entire shower pan and up at least 6-8" (needs to be above the pan) so the cost is $$$$. Make sure there is plenty of floor and wall tile left for storing in the event of a problem.
PRO
Creative Ceramic & Marble/ Bill Vincent
5 years ago
As far as the graduated cuts along the wall, the tile guy can't do anything about that. He's got to follow the wall and cut it in properly, which he did. The sheet of tile by the drain is a different story. If you look close, the drain is cocked just a hair, and it was enough to throw the coursing of the tile off. At that point he had one of two choices-- either straighten the drain so he keeps the full tiles, or shave a little off the edges of the two tiles next to the drain so the sheet will line up with the one next to it. What he did there is unsatisfactory, and should be changed.

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