Captain Slow

Bonus,

A lot of your questions really depend on what you get from your chosen course, so you can only expect subjective answers.

This is my experience:
I did a 4 week course and felt confident enough to embark on a full time career in domestic tiling.
I found that whilst I only wanted to take on "easy" tiling jobs initially, I was being asked to quote for full bathroom, natural stones etc. etc. I wasn't about to say that I had only just started tiling and did not have the knowledge so took a flyer and went for it. It means that you have to proceed slowly and research everything beforehand, which means you don't earn much money.
Wall and floor preparation are very important if you want superb results.

One final snippet of info from my experiences.....I used "small" format tiles whilst training, these are very different to use from large formats (very popular). I didn't use porcelain or natural stone whilst training, although I did learn the theory. Knowing how to fix porcelain and natural stone is very different from actually doing it!
Tiling a bathroom is very different from tiling a kitchen backsplash - I was not taught how to treat sockets at all.

As I said previously, I only learnt a fraction of what I needed to know to be a full time tiler in 4 weeks, so my advice is seriously pay attention if you are planning on just 8 days before starting a full time career.

Good luck for the future, and remember there is always someone on the forum that will be happy to provide advice and assistance.

NETT Darren

Must have been a pretty poor course if you didnt cover dealing with sockets, we do that on the first day, Thing is with this its all down to the indavidual person, some people have a natural aptitude to manual skills and others dont, i have produced some of the best tilers in the north east now, there are plenty on here that has attended my course with no experience of tiling before that are making a good living with a standard of a top professional, i make no illusions that any training centre is going to make you a master tiler straight away but what we do is give you all the skills to go and do the job very quickly and professionally, the thing that makes our course different is the delivery of the training and how to make it stick, and we give you, and go through all the different situations that you are likely to find yourself in and paint that picture in your head of how to deal with it, this comes in the form of over 40 pages of real life info, the setting out and cutting methods ive developed to do tiling are different from the normal methods but produce quicker and better results, the pictures on my website are done by people on a four day course which would leave some of the time served boys scratching there heads, like the angel of the north cut out of one piece of tile or the playboy rabits head, both of which were cut back into a section of tiles, but like i said its down to your own capabilities

Tiling Courses by North East Tiling Training
Tiling Tools by North East Tiling Training

bignose

I did the NETT course at the beginning of August just 5 days but it is excellent. Consider this though everyone is different and we learn at different speeds. Also some are more confident than others. I have taken an ad in a local paper and have landed a few jobs. They havent been too complicated and I have been happy with the results as have the customers. As my experience grows so will my confidence to take on more complicated work. On the other side of things lets not forget there are plenty of so called tradesmen out there who could do with going on a course themselves (not just tilers). I have already picked up one more trick of the trade and Im prepared to share that here.......BLOODY PLASTERER !

Glynis Skinner

Hi, I don't know the courses mentioned but in Harlow a very short course has been available and I know someone who has done the course but remains in his old , full time job. We now have a town flooded with inexperienced tilers all after the same few jobs, which is no good for anyone. Sorry to be pessimistic, maybe your course will be better. A BAL course I went on with my daughter was excellent. At the time it was free but you have to pay now, it's worth every penny. No course can take you from nothing to tiler in a week but that course was very good. Hope number is still the same: 01782 591100.

bigandy

Agree with the guys you can learn the basics of how you should tile on a course but learning can only be acheived on the job as far as i am concerned. Thats where working for friends and family comes in handy.learn when your not earning.

FAT PEOPLE ARE HARDER TO KIDNAPP