Part time tilers the death of full timers???

[Highlander]

Well suppose the title will rub a few people up the wrong way but here goes.

I have been established for 4 years and have been tiling on and of for 20 years and I suppose I was one of the part time tilers in my day.

It is not until you become full time that you realise the impact that the part time brigade have on the industry and how many are looking to start up as they think it is an easy way into a trade. The knock on effect is we have a market that is on a severe down turn and it is going to get worse and I mean a lot worse before it gets better. But it is going to impact the full time tiler more than the part timer who has a steady wage coming in and I do have to laugh when I have heard firemen and policemen saying they need to top up their wages by tiling I know if I was either I would not be having a partime job just my opinion but we full time self employed dont get paid holidays or sick pay we just get on with it.

So you may ask where am I going with this well tell you the truth dont really know just having a end of year moan I suppose. I thing I would say is anyone considering going full time at the moment you really need to think very hard beause I wouldnt I would take the steady wage and wait till things settle. I think when you become self employed you get into a rut and you keep going pushing yourself sure you can have some really great times but you will have some really low times as well but that is the joys of being self employed.

So I would be interested in opinons and I would be interested if Dave or Dan could be so good to put a poll onto this post as it would be interesting what the split on the forum is ie full time to partime.

Well all the best for 2009 full ot partime tilers.

Cheers


Gary

[Dave]

I think the sites closing has had a big impact on the domestic market...

We have loads of site fixers wanting a slice of the cake..so to speak....


this is the same in all trades though and not just tiling....

[CJ]

Have to admit that I started out as a part timer myself..........but it was the only way I could back then. When you have the normal mortgage, bills etc etc to pay you DO need a steady income of sorts.

Wot gets my back up though is the increasing amounts of 1-2 week course bods coming out, and they have been given the believe that they can start up full time on there own.........

Even advertising them on the box ffs.

Next year as we all know and agree will be poo or bust for loads of us, as well as other trades......new bods JUST coming out will suffer first......and then down the line.

So it is going to be sink or swim for a lot of people, and the last thing us full timers want or need is a shed load of newbies and wannabes trying to muscle in........now while that may sound harsh? It is survival of the fittest time.

Just my opinion mind...........

[james]

not sure if i count as full or part time tiler, as i do tiling as part of general maintenance work.
the problem with tiling is you may not do work for the same customer for years at a time as they may not move or update.
by the time they need the tiling done their either lost your number, forgotten how nice you were a nice tradesmen, your moved, your knees/wrists have gone or their going get the kitchen fitter to do it.

tilers always have to look for new clients,
unlike plumbers or sparks who get called alot more regular.
tilers have to have some regular clients like builders (personal view) or its going very hard.

[grumpygrouter]

I am not really sure how to class myself within this thread. I started up nearly 2 years with a view to "see how it went". If I had constant work, I feel I could be classed as "full Time" with my accounting being the "Part Time" side of my businesses. Not built up a sufficiently good client base yet to do it every day, every week though. Hopefully that will improve as time goes on.

[LM Ceramics]

i totally agree im now a full time tiler i was working with a firm for 3 years then set up on my own in jan this year and its not been easy like cj said it 2009 is going to be a testing year for us all survival of the fittest and no disrespect to anyone who has just finished a tiling course your going to struggle big time ive seen a few threads on here were people who have just finished a course gone straight out bought a van tools abit of advertising id say think about what your doing i would advise anyone who is thinking of setting up now think again im not just saying this for less competition if you have a full time job at the moment keep it

[Highlander]

[quote=james;153183]not sure if i count as full or part time tiler, as i do tiling as part of general maintenance work.
the problem with tiling is you may not do work for the same customer for ]

Your Partimer mate I am trying to see who are fulltime tilers and not partime I only do tiling as I have said to customers before when they ask do you do electrical or plumbing I just say whats it say on my van Highland Tilers not plumbers or sparkies. Thanks for your input and you are right Tilers are constantly looking for new work not like as you say sparkies and plumbers that get called out for wee problems or changes. My wifes uncle is a painter decorator and my wife is always on at me why has he got so much work well it sunk in when he said the majority o work is repeat customers that he has built up over the years wanting a living room done one year and maybe bedroom the next year and outside house every 3 years once you have a base like that you will always be busy. Not many customers want their tiles changed every three years.


Cheers.

[james]

i think i have seen your work on another site highlander?(high quailty)
sure your be seeing lots of repair work, like the one i saw wickes tile and grout on floorboards!

[davy583]

At the minute lad and lasses I am a part timer and I do it around my full time job (that I hate) tiling to me is not an easy way into trade. It is a way off giving my family a better lifestyle and I believe that 1 day I will go fulltime tiling but at the minute the markets just aren’t right. At the end of the day a lot of people are struggling with work issues and at times like this you have to take care of the people closest to you. So if this means that by wanting to build a career for myself in tiling and that upsets a couple of people then ha ho that’s the way I go.

[kilty55]

im full time,,started my business june 2008 of the back of a course,i know not everyone here is a fan of these courses but with hard work and plenty after course support i beleive i had a great year last year,7 days a week non stop just hoping iv created enough repeat business to scrape me through 2009 as most of my work i had to advertise non stop for in 2008 with the end of 2008 being a number of repeat jobs and referals.

[NETT Darren]

I know its easy to have a bit winge when things are down a bit , we all do it, what i say to everone on my course is look after yourself and try not to worry about the competition, let them worry about you, just means you have to be focused more and try and hunt out the business, market yourself more, try and find more contacts and potential business, they can only say no, but if you dont ask then your gaurenteed a no, Times are tough for everyone, how many people that are employed at the moment will be going back to work in Jan only to be faced with cut backs and redundancy, i understand your post but try and stick at it and look harder for the business, only the fittest survive, be one of them and dont worry about the people that fall by the wayside. When your self employed your loyalty is to yourself and your family and nobody else. Be possitive and focus on doing well and you will suprise yourself at the results, i found that if i went into do a quote feeling negative then you wont get the biz, try going in with a bubbly positive attitude and see the difference, people buy off people they like, get on with them and youve won the job.
Best of luck to you all for the New Year.

Regards
Darren the motivator

[Highlander]

I know its easy to have a bit winge when things are down a bit ,

market yourself more,

try going in with a bubbly positive attitude and see the difference, people buy off people they like, get on with them and youve won the job.

Best of luck to you all for the New Year.

Regards
Darren the motivator

Darren this is not me having a winge this is going to become a reality for a lot of guys and gals. I know how to market and network but if the work aint there it aint there and I aint one to go in not cheerful to customers mate never have never will be been through enough in my life to know how to win contracts/jobs.

I have loads of mates in the trade and other trades and they aint sitting on their butts they are fighting over jobs cutting the margines to get work hardly covering the costs. As you are in the training game it is in your interest to come out with the motivator speach and I am sure you will be finding this down turn as much as everyone and I hope all training schools are letting their students know the reality of the trade and not false promises like I still see one advertising earn 42k.

The reality is that there are lots of people struggling and look at tiling as an answer to getting them out of the hole they are in but reality is it is cut throat and only going to get worse. So it is not a winge its fact and if anyone is thinking it is short term think again. My mate is an upholsterer one of the best, traditional and was having a chat with him and he hit the nail on the head both trades we do are a luxury and the first thing to get cut when people are feeling the pinch is luxuries if people have lived with their cruddy bathroom for 10 years they will live with it for another couple till things get better.

Reality mate not a bed of roses but all the best for 2009.

Gary

[Alan.P]

Voted as part time, ex NETT course nearly 2 years ago, a stint in a commercial market after that ( full time ) and various domestic jobs since, will still be working 'full time' ( site co-ordinator ) for the company that employs me for the start of the year or until such time as my own business can support me and mine, I do see tiling as my future, sorry if that upsets some folk.

[doit4u]

I do tiling as one of the services I offer under the title of Do.It.4.U. so tile part time although self employed. Most of the people I know do tiling alongside other work i.e. decorating, plastering, plumbing.

Out of interest I looked in the local Yellow Pages that covers Swansea and West Wales and the vast majority of advertisers offer other services. The only place with a significant number that only advertise as tilers are in the Swansea/Neath/Port Talbot area. There is only one person advertising just as a tiler in Carmarthen.

I am wondering if this is a result of the number of chimney pots in an area. Swansea is a reasonable size city so there is probably enough work to work soley as a tiler, however Carmarthen only has a population of 15,000.

I find that people often don't want to be bothered looking around for different trades and once they have confidence in you will often ask you to do additional work. I am quite happy to do decorating, and in fact rather enjoy wall papering. I am also happy to do basic wood butchery as my father would call it - he was a carpenter by trade - like changing a door, putting up a shelf or cabinet. I have also built a fence, cleaned out gutters, assembled flat-pack furniture, power washed paths etc. etc.

I know my limitations and won't do plumbing, plastering, electrics, building and pass on the names of people I know to the customer. In fact I quite enjoy the variety and do a lot of small jobs for older people that others aren't interested in. I wish I could find someone who provided a handy man service near where my father lives {120 miles from me}. He has a flickering tube in the double fitting in his kitchen which probably only needs a new tube and/or starter and there is no way at 87 he could get up a step ladder. He tried a couple of local electricians and they wanted a call out fee of £60+ to even step over the threshold so it will have to wait until me next visit.

[doug boardley]

full timer,altho' as a youngster I mainly worked for smallish building firms where we had to turn our hands to all aspects of building. One day I'd be plastering, the next roof slating etc etc. I'm not to sure about all this "survival of the fittest" mullarkey tho'. Personally I think it is just as likely to be survival of the luckiest as well. You may have 2 tilers one exceptional, one ordinary, the exceptional tiler may miss ouy on a major job by a couple of quid a m2, the ordinary quality guy gets it and enough work for the year and to ride out the recession!

[grumpygrouter]

I think maybe a lot depends on your particualr "market". If you are mainly domestic, the guys with the good reputation may well be better off than those without, but if you do site work, I feel that price will certainly be the driving force here, reputation or not unless you are established with a good reliable contractor.

[garythetiler]

I started tiling over 20 years ago and have never done any thing else i have worked constantly and through out the last recession ,this will sound harsh but it really will get rid of a lot of the dead wood ,i am lucky were i am in a position where i am employing sub contractors at the moment ,i have let go all the part trained lads and the tilers who cant drive or dont have their own tools and will only use lads who are time served fulltime tilers , i have seen it with the other firms in my area it is only the reliable conscientious blokes who are working and the days of having to make do with what ever tiler you can get are gone for now , if i find my self out of work in the future i will be looking to work in europe with the exchange rate at parity now germany ,holland and belgium are looking inviting.

[faithhealer]

We all have to grit our teeth lads and get on with it, been shafted a couple of times this month but just getting on with it. (one to a 'dole waller'!) Not the fastest tiler in the world but still sticking to the 'do the best job you can rule' because that little bit of care and attention can bring in the next job.

[bigandy]

have voted myself as part time.

as i have recently stated i am coming back to the trade from a sabbatical(setting up another business)and have spent the last two months re visiting all my old haunts and finding some new ones.although i have found no work specific,just a lot of promises of work.
so i will be doing something else to tied me over until i can go full time again

[Rad2474]

An interesting thread Gary, I'm a part time course tiler but don't consider myself on par with the time served professionals. I know my limits of what i can and can't do so i don't consider myself a cowboy either. I tile for two reason's,one the extra money and two because i enjoy it,i've spent my life working in factories and to do something your proud of and get paid for it is a very nice feeling. You miss one very important point, at least in my opinion and that's the maasive influx of foreign workers who have taken jobs and who also have a bit of a reputation for undercutting british workers.

[cornish_crofter]

I'm Part time, but I know my limits. Having seen some of Dave's, Medler's and Mosaic Girl's work, just to quote a few people who I am up against, it is obvious that there are niche markets.

Mosaic Girl will probably have very little competition, whereas I would probably be up against a number of people. Her work is that of an accomplished artist, there is no doubt about that.

Dave's and Medler's work is typical of that of a tiler who's time served and had spent a large part of his working life in the trade.

I started tiling because I was asked to as part of my work in other areas. Hard to say when I learned to tile really. I started from tiling my own bathroom almost 20 years ago, I've still got the crappy little plasplugs tile cutter I bought to do that. I then did the kitchen after I fitted it, both in 6x6 tiles, and using fix and grout iirc!

A few years later I tiled another bathroom in our next house floor to ceiling, again using even cheaper 6x6 tiles.

As time progressed I ended up renovating a property where I did my 'apprentice' in general bulding. I had help from tradesmen on the building side. One earned a lot of money from me in helping with the skills I didn't have. I gradually learned from him and upskilled in a number of areas. I can say that I actually tackled around 90% of the work myself, and took a property that was uninhabitable to one that was being fought over when it came to let it out.

Tiling was one other aspect of this as well.

For some strange reason I have ended up doing more work inside bathrooms rather than other general building. Tiling has always been part of this. I've never been asked to just tile.

[bathroomboy]

About five years ago I retrained as a plumber,after being in a shift job for many years, and had a job with a national bathroom company for nearly a year, they promote an image of quality but in reality they were really bad, I left and started up on my own, I mainly do bathroom refits, I tackle everything my self including electrical, I take pride in my tiling and the quality of my work gets me recomended to others.
Most of my tiling is in bathrooms, I am asked do do floors sometimes, such as kitchens,dining rooms etc, but I try to steer away from it, funny I was doing some work in a house awhile back, and the customer had organised a tiler, he was tiling floors downstairs and splashbacks but is standard of work left a lot to be desired, I had to refit a faulty w/c pan and the woman rang me one day while I was working on another job insisting that I drop everything and remove the pan for tiler, I said to her tell him to leave the area where the pan was and I would tile it when I would be there next, but she would not have it, insisting I did the plumbing and he did the tiling, when I got there he was only putting the floor tiles down with wall addy and no ply overlay. I didn't say a word as her tiler was a so called professional.
It has been hard work at times but now it's beginning to pay off,as somebody said above, the current climate may get rid of the deadwood, theres a lot of cowboys out there ripping people off attracted by cheaper quotes, but we all know in this game, you get what you pay for.
Lets hope the doom mongers have got wrong for 2009 and things pick up.
Happy new year to all.

[windy]

Can i say worry about yourself not what others are doing around you look at your own business model see were you can improve,look at your skills how can you add these to your business to offer more services,by just relying on one set of skills,theres many things you may be missing out on.There will always be competion out there no matter what you do, its how you tackle these issues that truly makes a business man,because at the end of the day thats what you are.You may be a one man team or a company the issues are the same.Take a good hard look at what your doing, change if you have too.Happy new year i hope it works out for you

[whitebeam]

I've been self-employed for 28 years and started in the building game back in 1971, I find the question of part time hard to answer because I do plastering as well. I have a lot of contacts over the years and it's been a great favour that keeps me going, The part timers have been around for a very long time so I'm not going down that road. Work is now becoming very tight, If it effects me that much I will up my game and spend large amounts on specialist courses, Far beyond any part timer would involve themselves and hopefully save my bacon.

And I mean good money, I can afford it and would pay for the privilege

[oldgit]

me im full time,i dont agree with 2 week training schools and believe there should only be one way into tiling and that is via an apprentiship, i understand everyone has the right to do as they like fine,but it will balls up the whole building game in not very many years from now.
lets say there are 25 schools in the country each producing 15 tilers per 14 days that's 9,700 tilers per year add that too the immigrant tilers you are getting around 15,000 more tilers every year,ten years 150,000 more tilers.
we will either be working for nothing all or not working at all.

[doug boardley]

me im full time,i dont agree with 2 week training schools and believe there should only be one way into tiling and that is via an apprentiship, i understand everyone has the right to do as they like fine,but it will balls up the whole building game in not very many years from now.
lets say there are 25 schools in the country each producing 15 tilers per 14 days that's 9,700 tilers per year add that too the immigrant tilers you are getting around 15,000 more tilers every year,ten years 150,000 more tilers.
we will either be working for nothing all or not working at all.

an interesting point OG but I don't think the supply/demand market would let it get that far imo

[oldgit]

an interesting point OG but I don't think the supply/demand market would let it get that far imo

is supply and demand not already more than is required,i think it is.

[chrisroe]

no i dont know if anyone who trains them up knows how many stick it out but i think 1/4 max


btw im one of them 8 years and counting

[doug boardley]

is supply and demand not already more than is required,i think it is.

on reflection I think that you're probably right!, I've been lucky as I've always been busy, I think tho' that peeps should maybe be discouraged, if that's not to harsh, from thinking tiling is an easy route out of a rut, 'cos us guys and girls who've been here for a while know that quite a lot of course/newbie tilers fall by the wayside. Is that because they maybe haven't invested 5 or so years starting to learn how to tile, and therefore maybe only lose a few hundred quid and a few weeks time, I don't know!

[Thespanishtiler]

full time self employed and would say 90% of my work is pure tiling.

we will see another shake up in the industry this year as happens every so often and it will be the dreamers, and cowboys who suffer. the ones of us with the will to survive and dedication to our trade will be ok and the rest will fade away. there are alot of unskilled/inexperianced 'tilers' out there with unrealistic expectations of what they will earn and when the hard reality hits they will give up.

I was called to install a wet room for a builder mate as the site tiler only worked with ceramics not porcelain ! he then spent the next week telling me he would charge £50 pm for polished porc and stone if he went on another course to learn it ?

Tiling will not get you rich and many people have been attracted to the trade as they think they can earn big bucks and being self employed is a shock to some one who has had the benifit of holiday pay, sick pay, etc etc

personaly i just like to tile and what i earn is not what drives me, the creation of a great job done for my customer and my satisfaction is what i remember of the job not the profit.

full time pro tilers will not be killed off by part timers