For anyone thinking of doing a course with able skills.....

if you are thinking about doing the six week ica course with able skills which i did, think very carefully and consider doing the six weeks of practical and gaining the ica at a later date.

with the ica there is alot of paper work to cram into 6 weeks ie:- alot of time spent in the classroom.

Plus you also have to cover modules which involve

plastering

rendering

screeding

how to build a tower scaffold ????? lol

heath and safety

and probably a few more which i cant remember lol. like i said this cuts down the amount of practical you do in 6 weeks.

Also there is alot of late nights doing modules that have to be comleted within a certain time period.

Like i said if your wanting to learn more tiling then the 6 week course maybe better 4 you.

Right able skills its self is very well run but i must say make sure if you dont know something that you keep asking until your happy and know what your doing, as i felt we were left pretty much to do what we liked.

having said that the staff are friendly but if you have to stay in there digs they are a bit grotty but u only pay £20 a night so cant expect the ritz.

i hope this helps anyone out that might be thinking of doing a course

matt

I have not long come back from a stright six weeks tiling course with able skills and on a hole i can say that i was very happy with it.

The accomodation was good and the for the last week i was moved to there new accomodation that was even better, lets face it for £20 a night it would have to be very bad for me to complane, it was cleaned alot from what i saw.

The instructors max and terry were very good at what they did, both had a different style of instructing and it was a very relaxed learning inviroment with a bit of taking the mic thrown in, thanks guys you were grate

As for the course i thought it was good, however at times i did feel that the student to instructor ratio was a bit to hi, if in a class room fine, but when doing practical it somtimes felt like you were pulling the instructors left and right,
but the instructors did not mind.

On a hole then i thought the course was very good, if some one is thinking of going on a tiling course at able skills then i do recomend them.

i did a week with able skills in dartford, cant praise terry and matt enough, they cram a lot in, well worth the money,steve

for anyone looking to do a tiling course i would strongly recomend able skills in dartford. the two instructors Max and Terry are great blokes and really try to cram alot in.the week i started i feared the worst as there were 14 others besides my self for the introduction, but Max and Terry still manage to find time to get around to everyone and make sure things are ticking over nicley, second week the number of students droped to 3 which was great as max or terry were pretty much on your sholder the whole time, 3rd week there were just 2 of us and another 6 or 7 people started for the introduction week but this was the unit accreditation week for myself and wern't allowed help in anyway so it was not to much of an issue. 4th week was pretty much the same with me, the other fella and a few others continuing on from the induction week.
The facilitys are good in that the areas avalible to tile have obsticles and uneven surfaces and are kept in quite good nick really, sometimes a bit of adhesive scraping if the fella before couldnt be bothered to clean the area properly but no biggie.
The hardwares to a good stardard,near enough every tool in the place is made by rubi including a BL180 wet and a DT250 for the bigger/stone tiles. (oh and a little siverline wet cutter the everyone tried to avoid lol) and everyone gets their own ts50 plus to play with. all the adhesives and grouts are from bal, mostly a taining adhesive that dose'nt set 100% so its nice and easy to rip up when your done, but they do let you have a play with rapid a couple of times to get the feel for it. the tiles arent of the best quality and you'd be lucky to get two boxes the same shade, but they only go in the skip after anyway.

as best i could gather without being(too) nosey, max started working with terrys old man when he was 18 then terry started with them when he was 16, so between the both of them theres around 40years experience to draw upon and they have no problem showing you little tricks they've learnt along the way. both very different in how they teach, max makes things very simple to understand and will let you know if somethings not quite going right, whereas terry will see the mistake but wait until you notice then tell you what you should have done to avoid it in the future.

im not the most confident person in the world but i've come away confident i could do a good job, and i have on ever increasing number of occasions and thats purly down to terry and max.

and for anyone who likes to say thankyou after the course, Max likes a drop of red wine and terrys a southern comfort man.

all the best
Tommy

For anyone thinking on booking up a tiling course with ableskills at the moment i would consider it carefully.I have just cut short my second week with them in pure disgust of how they can leave 1 instructor with 16 pupils all at different levels.I was struggling how to make cuts in a corner with diamond pattern,the instructor shouted over that i was doing it wrong,came over to the bay for a closer look & a tut & then walked away saying i would have to do it again.Why couldnt he have shown me & helped me out.Theres quite a few guys who i have met at different stages who are not happy with a particular instructors attitude to training.
Anyways im now booked up with diamond training & im looking forward to starting with them as i don"t want to give up on tiling.

HI,

Able skills is perfect to me , ı done 8 week tiling course,

if you really want to be tiler noONE can stop you,

i would like to thanks MAX, TERRY, tiling and

GARY,
ANGELA,

JİM ,AL, PLUMBİNG i am not been THEİR student still giving ideas .thanks

MARTİN,SPENCER, plastering , i will go back for 8 weeks i done only week ,

that was perfect plastering i done i can not still believing ,

8 weeks tiling course change everything for me ,

i am a tiler and working for NVQ now

BİG thank you to ABLE SKİLLS

Originally Posted by wildcard

For anyone thinking on booking up a tiling course with ableskills at the moment i would consider it carefully.I have just cut short my second week with them in pure disgust of how they can leave 1 instructor with 16 pupils all at different levels.I was struggling how to make cuts in a corner with diamond pattern,the instructor shouted over that i was doing it wrong,came over to the bay for a closer look & a tut & then walked away saying i would have to do it again.Why couldnt he have shown me & helped me out.Theres quite a few guys who i have met at different stages who are not happy with a particular instructors attitude to training.
Anyways im now booked up with diamond training & im looking forward to starting with them as i don"t want to give up on tiling.

Hello Mate,

I'm 2 weeks into a 6 week Tiling course at Able Skills and beg differ. The two instructors who are teaching me seem to have plenty of patience as well as knowledge, considering I've come in as a tiling novice.

As I'm only 2 weeks into the programme I feel the knowledge gained so far has been vast and looking forward to the rest of my programme but of course will keep you updated.

Have met some great people on the course so far and everyone seems to be cracking on.

two sides to every story, thanks for both feed backs

Hi everyone,

Just keeping you updated with my progress on the tiling course.

I'm surprising myself with what I've achieved by week 3. This week I've been doing a City and Guilds assessment, Max has been looking after me all week and having completed this part I am over the moon. Looking forward to next weeks programme, I will be covering natural stone.

Will keep you all updated, Ray.

..back again with an update on my progress.

This week I have been doing Natural Stone in the Kitchen areas as well as a Slate floor - which is all going well.

Just read your comments and can only say that for me this isn't the case - it seems the same for a lot of other students I havent heard any moans everyone seems happy.

Having done some research on other centres I'm not disappointed!

Had a good week with the natural stone - will keep you updated...

Ray

Hi everyone, back with an update... well into my programme.

This week I've covered floor screeding and tanking, am also feeling more confident now in my ability. I wasn't overly keen on doing the floor screeding but Max explained the importance of learning how to do floor screeding because every floor you tile isn't going to be level, also he explained and demonstrated self-levelling compound now that I've covered this area I totally understand why it is necessary as a tiler to do floor screeding. Thanks Max.

I have just ordered a complete set of rubi tools which the boys have advised they're the best tools to have.

The next project lined up for me is to tile a complete a bathroom which I'm looking forward to - exciting!!

Feeling more confident now starting to look for a small van and looking into taking on some small private jobs - can't wait to be up and running.

I'm glad to have made the decision to do tiling and have no regrets about leaving the world of I.T.

Keep you updated next week with my progression... all the best Ray Barry

keep going RAY

Hi Ladytiler - Thanks for that - will keep you updated - hope your tiling is going ok and you have plenty of tiling work.

Keep me updated with any of the projects you're doing - all the best Ray

Have they got rid of that silverline cutter yet ray? glad your doing well