Do councils have real tilers

[Eddie]

I went to price a job yesterday. The council had been in to tile the bathroom, before she moved in. It is some of the worst tiling i have seen. They stopped tiling two tiles below the sink, and left the rest of the wall bare. There is hardly a straight or even grout line, to be seen/. I will post some photos, when i start the job, next week.

[doug boardley]

no they don't Eddie, the council pay peanuts and get monkeys, no offence intended to any council workers

[CJ CERAMICS]

the council here dont employ tilers they just usually have a labourer do it. when i applied this is what they told me lol...oh they also said that if i was to tile in any property that was owned by the council the customer would have to gain written permission from them which i would have to see and present a written quote with contact details to say so, as they consider this to be major rennovation of council property and has to be inspected to ensure that it is inkeeping with council standards toward home improvement, and that it was my responsability to inform the client of this.

[whitebeam]

My home which is a housing association and we have just had the kitchens done, the kitchen fitters and plumbers were the tilers and plasterers of bonding plaster to fill the walls destoyed by the electrians who could'nt put 2 syllables of english together.
The answer to your question is no as far as I'm concerned in my circumstances, dot and dab comes to mind for the tiling, I done the grouting which a bit of a blessing.

[timeless john]

Eddie - There was a recent thread that called it multi-tasking!

They get trained to do more than one job.

Go put it right Eddie

John.

[doug boardley]

a couple of years ago I was offered the post of Maintainence Surveyor of Building by our local council, it was an ok package financially, but what made me turn it down was having to try and manage a group of "tradesmen" that had failed in private sector

[Eddie]

She doesn't want it re-tiled, she only wants it tiled to the floor, and some tiling in the kitchen. I think she's happy with it.

[faithhealer]

Eddie - There was a recent thread that called it multi-tasking!

They get trained to do more than one job.

Go put it right Eddie

John.

Get that chip off your shoulder John lol Council workers just don't get trained, salting roads in winter, cutting grass in summer, tiling inbetween, all in a days work for them lol

[Oli]

All the council houses round here were taken over by the housing association, which I think is still the council with a different name, probably some tax fiddle.

Anyhow when they took over they redid my grandads kitchen and bathroom, and also fitted a new combi and central heating system, new windows and doors and redecorated a room of his choice. The kitchens not bad tiling wise, the bathrooms terrible, but he did manage to convince them that they'd said it was ok to have a free walk in shower / bath when it was actually a quite expensive extra option.

The spark that did the rewire was hopeless, the the proch and kitchen light switches were on a two gang switch, but when you turned on the kitchen light the porch one went off and visa versa, they also left him without central heating for four days and without a kitchen sink for a week

[faithhealer]

Did some emergency plumbing cover for the local council last year, out of 35 call outs in a week I'd say that half were due to neglect on the previous (council) plumbers, leaks caused by fibre washers missing etc

[garythetiler]

still waiting to see a good one lol

[Sean Kelly]

I went for a job interview last year for a local council contract. The job was advertising for a tiler. When I went for the interview they wanted someone who could tile/plumb and basically do general maintenance. The council in question was Slough, and the maintenance is outsourced by Interserve. The recruitment is outsourced to Hays. Basically, nobody knows what is going on there. I had a lucky escape.

I did some work for a housing association referb last year as a tiler. I was asked not to do any prep of the walls. I was asked to tile over old adhesive & wallpaper. There was no setting out, and I was asked to grout wall tiles in the same day.

Cheers Sean

[batiling]

I subcontracted to rok last year who secured the council contract in macclesfield for bathrooms and kitchens.This was a huge contract but everything was rush.They expected you to tile a kitchen(4 tiles high) on rough bonding and an area round a bath(3 walls) in a day.If you couldnt grout some1 would do that the next day.The tradesmen are all agency and the turnover of staff is unbelievable so no one cares about their work

[terry the tiler]

ha ha well i work for a company wich is in partnership with the council and ive tiled hundreds of kitchens and bathrooms! and the wall are so far out its almost unbelivable ! i once used 3, 15 ltr tubs of addy in one kitchen that was only 5mtrs?? had to tripple tile most of it to get it level, also the walls were that bad there was a 1 inch gap between the work top (that was worped ) and the walls !! there is bad tilers out there but iam pleased to say iam not one of them!! i will do wot ever it takes to make sure the tiles are all level and correct (couldnt sleep other wise) my moto is do a job once and do it the correct way that way the people r happy and that makes me happy and satisfied ( i blame the plasterers who dont care about the tilers and just want a early finish!! plus the cheep crap worktops the councill use that r stacked verticaly in storage rather than layed flat ?? so wen there fitted most tilers just go off the work top with there tiles thinking its level?? thus cousing problems.

[whitebeam]

Would'nt you be better using powdered adhesive

[terry the tiler]

yes but they dont supply it ! just got 2 use wot they give me ( i no ! its crazy ) i think most of these council propertys tiles are held on by the grout