I agree, it is a tear out. Please find a new tile guy and make sure he does tile like this. Dont just take their word for it. Its obvious, that the tile guy you have, doesnt know how to do any better.

Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of...guessing there’s no way to salvage the $2K worth of tile either.

Rip out for sure. There is no even spacing at all on those.

Another tipsy tile setter.......

Just for fun, go ahead and pull a left over sheet of stones and lay them down on a KNOWN flat surface (like a table top or a counter top). If you have two sheets that's even better.

Now lay them on the table top and fiddle with them to see if YOU can line them up in a way that would get the gaps even. Excellent. Now look to see how even the thicknesses of the stones are when they are sitting on a flat/plumb/smooth surface.

If they are wonky heights then we know the tiles are to blame. If they are all even-stevens, then we know the 'guy' (I'm not calling him/her a tile setter) didn't do the tile justice. And for laugh's and giggles, you might want to find out if this 'guy' is a professional tile setter.

And just for fun, marble needs a very specific form of install. Because marble is porous, it requires a white thinset/mortar (any other colour will stain the marble from underneath) AND the tiles must be SEALED TWICE before they are installed and then once afterwards. There is a very easy way to find out if marble has been sealed. Simply put a drop of water on a tile. Leave it alone for 1-2 minutes. If it REMAINS as a bead of water (like a drop of rain sitting on a newly polished car) then the tile has been sealed. If it SOAKS IN (and leaves a dark spot where the water used to be) then you have unsealed marble.

Your tiles look pretty dry...but without the water test I'm just guessing by some pictures sitting on my screen.

Good luck and tell us what you found out. Be prepared for a full remove/replace.

Agreed @SJ McCarthy. This could be a poor-quality marble hexagon mosaic tile. You have six edges on a single tile to align. If it's a bad mosaic, the only way to do it would be to lay each individual piece by hand. I'm sure your installer didn't quote that. If you want to keep this tile, you may have to work with what you have and just take out the most offensive pieces. The expectation of having even grout lines throughout may not be realistic if the issue is with the tile and not the installer.

Ok. I stopped by and grabbed two sheets from the box. Just lined them up next to each other on our counter. They aren’t perfect but are TOTALLY FINE. I would not be complaining at all if the floor looked like this. (Also they are perfectly level and even thickness throughout). There’s definitely some variation in the size of the grout lines, but the real problem with the floor seems to be that he pushed the sheets tightly up against one another without leaving any space at all between them, which additionally caused many of the tiles to become crooked. (Also, why not use a few spacers to adjust the irregular tiles here and there...?) Anyway, I‘ll be curious to see how our GC handles fixing this. The tile guy mentioned needing to fix “a few spots” in that bathroom, but it’s throughout the entire floor...

Oops forgot to post the photos.

Ok...so now we know the grout lines are not very good on the sheet. That won't change. No matter how hard you try to get the grout lines 'even' it won't happen. So the spacing between the tiles is about as good as it gets. Where two sheets meet the installer has the ability to do his/her best. Which is where this installer has not quite met the grade.

The unevenness of the floor is the biggest problem. The subfloor/pan is the only thing that will cause such a ripple effect. Who was responsible for the preparation of the substrate? Do you have photos?

And did you test the tiles for sealant?

This particular room was an addition, so the subfloor is new construction/plywood. Perfectly flat. This same tile setter installed the cement board over the plywood (which looked fine to me, beforehand, but I’m not really sure what to look for.) The only thing I could point to is that he did leave some gaps at the edges in the cement board, which are probably causing those drooping tiles around the shower area and around the edges of the room. No idea how we have low-sitting tiles in the middle of the room, but we do.

I did not get a chance to test the tiles for sealant.

"This particular room was an addition, so the subfloor is new construction/plywood. Perfectly flat."

Laser and or level verified?

Level verified (but either way, the problem is not that there is a slight slope in the tile, it’s that the tiles are bumpy from one to the next. The subfloor certainly did not have bumps...

Ok...now we are back to the installer. Is this person a professional tile installer? Tile setting (especially STONE tile setting) is an art as well as a science. It is a particular skill set that only those who work exclusively with tiles (stone and man made tile) will have acquired.

I'm going to guess this is a 'guy' who has been asked by the GC to throw in some tile. The subfloor was level BEFORE s/he started but the floor sitting on top of the subfloor is uneven. Something like that comes down to the installer knowing (or not knowing) his/her limitations on a project. I would say the person installing these has just been promoted to their highest level of incompetence.

The thin-set/mortar bed underneath (the stuff holding down the tiles) is probably uneven meaning the tiles sitting on top will be uneven. Which means you have to get down to that level and fix the issue. And that means a redo.

And JUST for fun, do you have in-progress photos? I can see a schluter system board on the wall (which is a good thing), but it is unclear as to whether or not the entire space has the proper water proofing.

GC says they’ll need to redo it, so I guess he agrees that this was not up to par. Anyway, here is the only full room photo I have - doesn’t really show much. He hasn’t done the membrane on the shower wall yet.