Bred into the job? forced? or wanted to ?

[Tenchman]

Just wondering how many of us had been bred into the trade = 2nd generation etc etc without much of a choice, or forced for something to do to keep parents off your back. or wanted to do the job ?

I count all the people who took it up late in life and took course's etc as wanting to do the job.

just wondered about the others because and i don't want to stir up arguments a lot of tilers are regarded as bad tempered by other trades. And yes that is usually because a lot of the other trades walk all over the new tiles etc.

However i know from my travels that disgruntled tilers are common and usually because they wanted to do something else. lets hear your stories good or bad ?

just as an aside i once worked on a restoration job down in Kent and a young sparky said to me that tiling was the easiest job in the world plus it was also the newest trade

I mentioned Pompei mosaic's ( which i've studied ) made by the romans and earlier the Byzantine people also mosaics & geometric work.

Plus i said most tilers didn't get their muscles because the job was easy. e.g try grouting a 500 sq metre floor in epoxy 3 part not this new stuff.

lastly i mentioned that his was definitely one of the newst trades as there are people alive who remember when places first got electrified!
sadly it didn't register as he didn't have a clue about anything i'd said but i did refrain from belting him with my rubber mallet as i reasoned he wouldn't have felt it .
So how many got pressganged and what did you really want to do.
my family were apalled i became a stone mason as most of them were architects and such like. Cheers Steve

[doug boardley]

I started as a stop gap when I left school. I was waiting to join RAF as a airframe technical electrician apprentice, so I went to work with the building firm that my brother worked for. I met a girl, fell in love, and decided that RAF wouldn't suit me after all.....Girlfriend went away to Oxford Uni after a couple of years and that was it, she studied to become a solicitor and I stayed learning the best job in the world

[nybor62]

my 1st job leaving school 1978, got set on as an apprentice small tiling outfit, was meant to be sending me to colledge, but after 6 months no sign of colledge , i was earning , 15.00 a week and doing some right hrs. loved the job but my friends who worked down the pit were earning 4 x as much as me , so i joined them in the mine,what a mistake i hated it i stuck it out for a while , bit eventually got back in to tiling ,

and as sir ramic said the best job in the world,

[deanotile]

i left school with nothing. but tiling was in the family so i was guided towards that

[Sir Ramic]

my 1st job leaving school 1978, got set on as an apprentice small tiling outfit, was meant to be sending me to colledge, but after 6 months no sign of colledge , i was earning , 15.00 a week and doing some right hrs. loved the job but my friends who worked down the pit were earning 4 x as much as me , so i joined them in the mine,what a mistake i hated it i stuck it out for a while , bit eventually got back in to tiling ,

and as sir ramic said the best job in the world,

Uhh I think that was Doug. !


I wanted to join the Police force but they werent taking anyone at the time (1977). So like Doug I thought I would do a few years as atiler with my dads firm then join the Police later.
Well as soon as you start getting money and mates things change and before you knew it , 10 years had passed. I have had ups and downs during my 34 years as a tiler but I am enjoying it more these days.

[Mike]

i started about 15 yrs ago doing my own tiling in my houses (small jobs) then friends asked me then it spiralled from there. for about 12 yrs i tiled on my 'rest' days from my boring factory job, 4 days on 4 days off. then 2 years ago i took voluntary redundancy from the factory and set up properly myself, best decision i made. i now enjoy going to work and doing my job. i believe you must enjoy it to do a proper job.

[SandyFloor]

I left school in 79 and served apprenticeship as fabricator/welder and then draughtsman. I worked in constructional steelwork as a manager of sorts for the next twenty years or so and quit due to stress. While studying software programming afterwards I was working with a joiner mate part time and one of the jobs was constructing a large bathroom showroom that was needing tilers to do the showroom tiling which led onto working with the tilers and soon on my own. I'd done quite a bit on my previous homes so that's where it started. Did one of the courses about a year after as the technical knowledge floating around was pretty poor so I wanted to speak to someone qualified. Over the years I sloped into what I do now which is tile, vinyl tile and wood flooring and am doing ok now.

Never finished the software programming as a bloke I knew with a small software house started sending all his work to India so I reckoned any future work was limited ....think I made the right choice.

[Bri]

I got my first part time job working for Safeway supermarkets when I was 16 in 1996 and made the mistake of leaving school with only my GCSE's to work there full time. Did every job imaginable there, from night shift to trolley pushing and eventually worked my way up to a managerial position. I bought my first flat in 2003 when I left home and this was my first dabble in tiling, did the kitchen, bathroom etc. Over the next couple of years I did the usual stuff for family and friends (nothing big) and finally in 2007 enough was enough with the supermarket job and I went to STC (then it was PTS) in Harlow to do their 2 week course. I handed in my notice the day I got back to work from my course and have never looked back, I'm now in my 4th year being self employed and strangely this is the hardest I've had to work to get the jobs in. I do have bad days like we all do but I've never been happier and often wonder why I didn't do it earlier. I did love my old job but always said that if I ever woke up in the morning and dreaded the thought of going to work then it was time for a change, so tiling was it! I've been very lucky and have had some wonderful jobs and met some people that I now consider to be very close friends, I'm also looking forward to the recession going away so I can return to making peoples homes more beautiful for them! My work is finally picking up again but it has been a real battle to get the work, something I'm not used to! I've been trying out some new marketing strategies recently and they really are working, when I get half an hour I'll explain all in a thread so it can hopefully help a few others.

[jolly fix]

hated school,left when 1 was 15 to go to tech college for a cfe course (plumbing/brickwork/carp/paint +chem/maths/,english etc),whilst there got an apprenticeship with a stomemason company,spent years in a shed 'tip,tap,tip,tap and on site,when on site was given all the tiling jobs which i enjoyed,was taught bits about tiling(prep,prep,prep),but learned most myself (trail and error).worked for several firms,and myself.ended up doing site work which i hated,got fed up with prep work by others not done right/having to move all the tile boxes i just placed because someone forgot to say that there was a change of plan and other trades would be working in room with tile boxes etc...can i plug in here?.....musician friend asked if i would like to help out on a job with him ,ended up working for several theatre's (sets,effects,sound lights),loved it.still tiled but not as often,then worked for H.T.V.and for several bands as sound guy.tour and gigs/fests all over,but most of the work (fests)was summer time,so tiled/building work rest of year.long story but ended up as a circus performer/tent master for 3 years,done a few tv shows /adverts etc.guy i worked with for circus also worked for a German run glasshouse firm other times of the year,got a job with them restoring old orchid house etc on old large houses ,kew gardens and stately homes all over the uk.then back working for several bands again.had enough of hotels/b and b's/tour buses,and just being away all the time so 7yrs ago gave it all up and went back tiling /stonework,other building stuff,home every night...still keep my hand in now and again with the gig work,the moneys good,hours are bad,but i get a chance to see old friends,makes a nice change from mixing addy etc....so tiling for 26 odd years ,sometimes part time.

[user123]

Not sure I can reply on here as despite my NETT course I'm not a tiler, I'm a mosaic artist who wanted to learn about tiling for increased technical knowhow, and feel if I was a strong young man rather than a soft arty woman I would have loved to be a tiler, expecially as I had done loads previously doing up different houses etc.

But now with my mosaics are me finally becoming true to myself, there is such a thing as being overqualified and coming from an academic family - art is not considered a valid career option, at all, even though that is were I was obviously the most happy in.

So I had a whole load of careers - came to the UK from Germany as a technical translator, then got into social and youth work, doing that and translating part time side by side, for then years or so, the social work led me back into half the family tradition of medicine and observing the connection between mental health and physical health this lead to me studying natural medicine, run my practice and from that specialised in myoskeletal alignment, a unique American approach of osteopathy, another ten years or so.

Various realisations that perhaps now was the time were MY needs should also be fulfilled rather than looking after everybody elses and other 'coincidences' pointing the way led me to finally follow my bliss, and art in mosaics pushed itself forward - but there are years and years worth of ideas still in me stacked up through my life that I want to express still, so who knows where I'll be heading still? Love the freedom of development, of finding out what else I can achieve without chasing someone else's dream, of finding out who I could be, just for me. Not easy to rid oneself of conditioning past and present, is it, but the most exciting thing ever....

[Bri]

This is a great thread! I love knowing how people got to where they are today, genuinely interesting.

[nybor62]

Uhh I think that was Doug. !


I wanted to join the Police force but they werent taking anyone at the time (1977). So like Doug I thought I would do a few years as atiler with my dads firm then join the Police later.
Well as soon as you start getting money and mates things change and before you knew it , 10 years had passed. I have had ups and downs during my 34 years as a tiler but I am enjoying it more these days.

i think that was doug , so it was sorry

[Dan]

I tiled for a bit between jobs, and ended up never getting another job. Opened a training centre and trained for a bit. Then I did the forum thing.

All just chance really.

I don't actually enjoy tiling other peoples jobs now but don't mind doing the odd bit for myself.

[widler]

left school in 86,with nowt apart from loving beer! my dad was a car body man and my mum a medical secretery,so the obvious choice was,err plastering for me
the firm where i served my time did tiling as well,loved the job,apart from the money,£27.50,while my mates were earning £100 in factorys,i was gutted,only enough for 2 nights out,and no new clothes,but stuck it out for 4 years.
we nearly always did work in old buildings,old farmhouses,schoolhouses,cottages,we plastered and tiled most. always enjoyed looking into the history of some,we once worked in a farmhouse where 1 of the pendle witch's used to frequent,old mother demdyke,and apparently put a curse on it,scared me to death.

just done a cottage near me from start to finish,bought it for my daughter,doing it nights and weekends,we gutted it,she is now in. i have photos,will try and start a thread and put them up,aint right good on these computer things though.
cheers craig

[andy allen]

i left school in 1981 walked into the job center looking for a trade, i didnt want a dead end job and the first job i saw was for a trainee ceramic tiler. that will do i thought to myself, i went for an interveiw and got the job.

started off tiling on building sites with an old chap who had been doing the job for years , after two years working with him i was given my own sites to run, did that for a couple of years then met another tiler who i got on well with and we both jacked our jobs in and started our own company, after a couple of more years we had built up a really good buisness employing 10 tilers and doing most of the major housing sites and large contracts in our area, we then opened up our own tile shop and were doing quite nicely until the reccesion hit in the late 80s early 90s.

thats when it all started to go wrong the sites stop building houses, our rent and buisness rates nearly doubled on the shop, we had two big firms go bust on us , owing us a small fortune, in the end we had to fold the buisness , my partner went to germany to do the auf wiedersehen pet thing, and i stayed her and started up on my own, and it was the best thing i ever did, so after 30 years in the trade im quite happy just plodding along on my own, far less stress, and im looking forward to the end of another reccesion hopefully this will be the last one for me.

[Stewart]

I left home and school at seventeen , much to the disappointment of my family and moved into a place that I had just inherited from my father after he died. Got one of my mates to move in with me, who's dad was a tiler with his own business and ended up going to work there just to kill time before going to uni. Really enjoyed working with my hands so asked if i could get a full time job with them and luckily they said yes.

I come from quite a middle class family where everyone went to uni and got degree's. Tradesmen were just people you got in to fix things when they went wrong. This resulted in being disowned by my mother who's an insufferable snob of the highest order (we haven't spoken to each other for over twenty years now and counting) I went on to do a 4 year apprenticeship and loved every minute of it. Every day was a joy and once I learned not to take myself too seriously, I fitted right in. Although.... it was tough at times, having a posh english accent on scottish building sites (I was born in Leeds and grew up in Upton in west Yorkshire)

At 22 I set up a business with two brothers offering the full site package of taping, painting and tiling. Picked up a site with a local builder and we ended up doing over a thousand houses for them. While doing that, we got quite a few commercial contracts and we ended up employing over 30 guys at one point. We were doing jobs all over the uk and were extremely lucky to get in with the right people at the right time.

After ten years we had created quite a pressure monster and I decided to sell my share to my two partners (both still very good friends to this day) and take a year off. I then set up SPM to fill a gap I saw in the private market (no more sites for me) for a quality tradesman to do high-end installs for high-end customers, without ripping them off like all the big bathroom companies were doing. That's what I'm still doing today and loving every minute of it. I also met my wife who was the daughter of one of my customers, so I've got a lot to thank the tiling game for.....

[hillhead]

I left school at 18.
Straight to training centre for carpentry.
16 years then spent in the timber machining trade which i was damn good at !!
10 years ago a tiler who was tiling my house asked me to join him and learn !! he said i could do it.
I refused at that time but about 6 or slightly more years ago now another tiler asked me to join him, i took one weekend to decide to go with him and for 6 months i learned well and went on a tech course too.
Then Hillhead Tiling was born, i started off with 6 jobs in book and never looked back.
So at 34 years of age i changed careers.

[Gazrus]

Here goes, left school in 84 originally wanted to join the army(dad was a PTI), but I decided if i got an apprentiship I wouldn't join up.
I went on a YTS with community task force CTF, they dealt with all the trades except tiling, I took to bricklaying & plastering with ease, while there I got a placement with a local building company, after 6 months they sent me to college to learn bricklaying but I worked with the plasterers all the time so the boss wanted me to learn plastering but still do a bricklaying city & guilds, which I passed. I carried on plastering & my mentor who was from old school also did tiling & he showed me how to go on.
I worked for two builders plastering & tiling up until 1997, I used to work away a lot of the time & once the bairn was born the missus wanted me more local, so I had to work in a factory as the money was't so good local on the tools.
I used to work weekend shift so I was free to do my plastering & tiling during the week, eventually the factory closed & I got made redundant last year, I still had all my tools & a van with my regular contacts, so it made sense to try it on my own.

[DJS]

Yikes where would I start?

My uncle was a tiler, but he was also a drunk so I feel I didn't really get much influence from that, other than a general liking of tiles at a young age, and a general liking of alchohol from the age of about 14!! He tiled our bathroom/entrance floor and kitchen splashbacks years ago. Looking at the kitchen now, it should be in the hall of shame, but the entrance hall isn't too bad.

The bathroom he did, got ripped out about 2 yrs ago, and I plumbed in a new one and used the help of a plasterer to dryline the walls, and skim in places, and another friend, who I was told was a good tiler. I wanted him to do a good job, but I wasn't happy with the finish. So to save arguments with friends, I left it as it was. Grout is now cracking and discoloured/yellowed & he grouted the internal corner, no silicone. Because of this, ideas were starting to form in my head.

Originally, I left school to train as an accountant, cause I was good at maths, but I also showed potential artistic flare at school. I was a bit of a naughty boy at school, didn't like the posh attitude's with the accountants, as I come from a council estate background. After 3 yrs accountancy training, I quit and settled into another boring career doing payroll (tax/Ni), as I didn't want to study for further qualifications. Spent another 12 yrs doing that, got made redundant twice, got sacked from 3 jobs cause I started to hate it too.

During my 20's, I was probably a bit of a p.head myself with a steady office job, I would spend evenings and weekends DJ'ing, snowboarding and skateboarding. Generally messing about and spending time with friends. Even bought a house and split up with my missus a few months later, and amassed a great deal of debt in the process.

That was till about I turned 28 and almost 30K in debt!! I have spent the last 7 yrs of my life paying that off, and I made the last payment just 1 month ago. So I am now officially debt free again. Haha...I'm not in recession anymore!!

So what started it? About 5 yrs ago, I had just got sacked from one job, and I got some plumbing training and loved it. Had no money and my landlord asked me to do his bathroom, so that was my first job. I then went on to start doing the round of jobs for family and friends, which is still ongoing to this year. And one day a friend called me and asked if I would be his plumber.

He turned out to be a cowboy, and wanted to tell me how to do my job, when I knew things weren't being done to standards. I didn't know enough myself to put up a good argument, so I decided to leave his employment, do a training course in tiling and plumbing and setup on my own.

So at the age of 35, I have a 2yr old son to think about, estranged girlfriend, a business that is 1 yr old, still living at my parents!! My partying days are definately over and I'm working towards buying a house for myself, and retirement. It's gonna be a long road!!

I've seen that no smoking thread, and you've got me thinking about that too!!

Here's to humble begginings and happy endings

[doug boardley]

what a damned good read through these posts

[timeless john]

When I was born the midwife tripped up over a lip on the hospital floor tiles and I was dropped on my head!

[hillhead]

When I was born the midwife tripped up over a lip on the hospital floor tiles and I was dropped on my head!

.... And that's where timeless tiling solutions was born.

[Tenchman]

Blimey we should put these altogether and do a book, Ok here's mine, My family were all either leaning towards architects or academics ( i've even restored tiles on a church two of my family built ) or they were real wrong-un's.

My family are originally from Wexford in Eire, no-one liked the idea of me tiling or stone masonry at all.

The people who trained me were Welsh and were quite harsh, i showed promise on cutting mosaic etc so i became a Tyler-Mason. I have worked all over the UK i've also done lots of commercial & domestic work in my youth and at other times to get by as restoration wasn't recognised.

I've been stuck in Algeria fed rotten meat and ended up losing so much weight i nearly died , contracted a few different things like amoebic dysentery which apparently can stay with you . hated that bit of my tiling career.
But i've had some great times like working & fishing in New Zealand, travelled all over europe. met some great people seen fantastic places also been bored to tears and had to put up with crap as well.

Had clients from hell and others who were so good they are still in my top ten.
Had various tiling partners who sadly all turned bandit at some point usually down to money - greed.
But ever optimistic i believe that one day the people who run the various organisations will see sense and have skilled craftspeople train others rather than blue eyes or those with no experience but they went to same " club" etc.

As with anything this game is only as good as the people and if we enjoy our work it shows in the outcome of the job.
Lets hope this recession dwindles soon. I really enjoy doing my work and mores so when the client is appreciative, we did a job once when the woman with a lovely old house couldn't afford to have the steps done in the black & white geometric that the hall had just been tiled /restored in. we had enough gear over so we did the steps as well. it made the job look better and one of her relatives was so pleased that we had done it free of charge he passed on work to us for a couple of years.

I've enjoyed reading how we all got to become tilers that includes you G and everyone else. it's been fascinating i hope this thread goes on for awhile so we can see how lot's of us became tilers or Tylers as we were once known. a very old & noble profession not given enough respect at present.

just as an aside i joined a stateside forum = Wow reference membership it's incredible they have hits on threads running into over a hundred thousand!!!!!! look up john bridges forum.
Thanks for sending stuff in keep it coming Cheers Steve aka Tenchman

[jolly fix]

i was trained by welsh masons too (A Arthur and son),long gone now and yes they were quite harsh

[Tenchman]

Total obedience or else a cuff or possibly something thrown at you!! plus the joy of using quarry tiles soaked overnight in a tin bath, on good days that would mean maybe just a small split on your fingers because the weather is ok. But in winter you would have to break the ice off as well, the slurry used to beat the tiles into caused your fingers to split and blood would ooze out of your fingers all day.
The next day the pain would be enough for you to want to give up , however the kindly mason who doesn't even bother with your name ( i got called city boy for years )

Will likely give you a belt if you didn't get on with it, i missed out becoming a carver but i realise that it was best doing what i do now if it hadn't been for restoration and showing promise on a mosaic floor i was plotting murder nearly every day ha ha.

Still loved the job though, and because we were doing sand & cement everyone working on it went through same thing, it took awhile for your body to adapt to the harsh reaction of the cement and the wet.

I had one job in between doing all these mosaic'c ( which took nearly 3 years ) i got other jobs because by then i was the best at tiling. so i got dropped off everywhere, farm on top of a hill so steep they had a winch to pull gear up.
No heating , slept in a barn had rats & mice and cockroaches sharing your sleeping bag it was really crap.

People were as dour as you could get it was like a hill billy movie. did the job double quick and got out.

Next job that i was given that deviated from the mosaic contract = doing another mosaic which was brilliant nice place food warmth etc. then back to cutting hundreds of thousands of mosaic again.

next holiday job i was given = a mosaic in New York job was easy and the pay was better, but i had to have a nanny as i was under 21 so no drinking clubs nothing .

When adhesives first arrived they were usually rubbish like laticrete mixed up with cement it was like a rubberized goo some in pinkish colours others in black or brown.

Worse than you can imagine it got everywhere it was hard to build up a thickness you could use and it was hell to remove off tiles.

In some respects the job is lots easier now but it has also missed steps out which make better tilers.

Like being able to back edge with a hammer so you are that good you can cut pipe semi circles out.

or you use a tungsten chisel to cut lines etc out of a tile and tap the back of it and break it clean.

Bet that's not taught anymore. when our generation go some skills will never get shown anymore.

It's a good job to get into but it is so layered skill wise in some parts of the UK there are tilers who can't do floors or vice versa, some only work with tub sticky and so on.

There are lots of tilers who can't screed or darby a wall out, yet even though i was taught by masons we had to do the prep from the brick or stone out .

Not advocating everyone should do it now as other trades have taken some of these aspects over but a tiler used to do all of that & more.