Browse Forums Building A New House 1 May 07, 2020 10:25 am I was hoping others can share their experience on dealing with their builder with regards to aligning the bathroom floor and wall tiles. I cam across a post where someone building with the same builder as me was complaining about their floor and wall tiles not aligning (photos below). This looks terrible (cannot believe the builder think this is acceptable) and prompted me to ask the builder to confirm that my tiles will be aligned (i have the same size tiles for floor and wall), and their answer (as quoted from the tiling contractor) was: "By law wall tiles have 1.5mm spacers & floor tiles have 3 mm spacers & therefore they will not line up." Looking for feedback on what others have done and what the end result was. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Bathroom Floor and Wall tiles alignment 2May 07, 2020 12:04 pm I will be interested what others say because it sounds like BS to me. I would have thought that a quality tiler would take the time to do a proper setup for the tile alignment. I know that with different tiles this at times can be an issue. Generally they should centre the tiles to the doorway and they should flow from there. Re: Bathroom Floor and Wall tiles alignment 3May 07, 2020 12:13 pm Generally tilers are supposed to be experienced enough to know basic things about tiling alignments, although it always makes sense to provide professionally prepared tiling alignment plan to your tilers before the work starts. This level of worksmanship is awful and tiles are not only misaligned on the floor but also on the wall itself. They have to redo the whole job, but I would rather ask them to remove the tiles, provide you with the new tiles and involve some other tiler to complete the job. To the best of my knowledge, there is no regulations which specify the tiler spacing, e.g. for some cool looking rectified tiles you may even have 1 mm spacing easily. Even if there is such a regulation for minimum spacing, he could have just done wall and floor tiles at 3 mm spacing. Re: Bathroom Floor and Wall tiles alignment 4May 07, 2020 1:18 pm alexp79 Generally tilers are supposed to be experienced enough to know basic things about tiling alignments, although it always makes sense to provide professionally prepared tiling alignment plan to your tilers before the work starts. This level of worksmanship is awful and tiles are not only misaligned on the floor but also on the wall itself. They have to redo the whole job, but I would rather ask them to remove the tiles, provide you with the new tiles and involve some other tiler to complete the job. To the best of my knowledge, there is no regulations which specify the tiler spacing, e.g. for some cool looking rectified tiles you may even have 1 mm spacing easily. Even if there is such a regulation for minimum spacing, he could have just done wall and floor tiles at 3 mm spacing. Thanks for the feedback. Agree, the workmanship on this job is terrible. The pictures are not from my build however, they are from someone else who is building with the same company as me, hence my enquiry to try and ascertain what options I have to avoid this disaster. Re: Bathroom Floor and Wall tiles alignment 5May 07, 2020 5:03 pm We built in SA so unsure whether the spacing is different here to other states. But we requested for our wall and floor tiles to be aligned which was easy enough to do as they were the same size. It was noted on our tiling specs and the tiler did as directed. No problem at all. Re: Bathroom Floor and Wall tiles alignment 7May 07, 2020 7:50 pm I hate to dash everyone's hopes but that tiling is fine and is infact exactly the way they should be laid. If you look at the pictures closely you will notice that the tile lines slowly step across as you go across the wall. The tiles aren't the same size so the grout lines would never line up. As soon as the tiler lays one grout line across the floor and up the wall it will become painfully obvious that they don't line up on the next tile and will just look worse as you go across. He has skillfully avoided that by staggering the joins. So much so that none of you noticed that they were different. Imagine when the tiling turns back on the return wall, the tiles are rectangular so will be even more of a challenge. Once it's grouted it won't look anywhere near as obvious. The only way around it is to buy wall and floor tiles from the same manufacture. That way the tiles are most likely made to be able to line up. Even if you buy 600x300 tiles they may actually be 598x298 and 600x300 from a different manufacturer. Again you will run into trouble if you try and line up the grout lines. The day's of lining up tile lines is pretty much gone as people opt for varying sizes and manufactures for floor and wall. With large format and rectified tiles the grout lines are minimal so it really isn't a big issue. Accessible Carpentry & Cabinets accessiblecarpentry@gmail.com accessiblecarpentry.com.au https://www.facebook.com/pages/Accessible-Carpentry-Cabinets/583314911709039 Re: Bathroom Floor and Wall tiles alignment 8May 07, 2020 9:51 pm Oops, yes, indeed. Those tiles above look like 30 cm vs 20 cm. My bad how this has been missed. I think I was confused by the builder's response as it has nothing to do with the tiles sizing. Re: Bathroom Floor and Wall tiles alignment 9May 08, 2020 8:13 am chippy I hate to dash everyone's hopes but that tiling is fine and is infact exactly the way they should be laid. If you look at the pictures closely you will notice that the tile lines slowly step across as you go across the wall. The tiles aren't the same size so the grout lines would never line up. As soon as the tiler lays one grout line across the floor and up the wall it will become painfully obvious that they don't line up on the next tile and will just look worse as you go across. He has skillfully avoided that by staggering the joins. So much so that none of you noticed that they were different. Imagine when the tiling turns back on the return wall, the tiles are rectangular so will be even more of a challenge. Once it's grouted it won't look anywhere near as obvious. The only way around it is to buy wall and floor tiles from the same manufacture. That way the tiles are most likely made to be able to line up. Even if you buy 600x300 tiles they may actually be 598x298 and 600x300 from a different manufacturer. Again you will run into trouble if you try and line up the grout lines. The day's of lining up tile lines is pretty much gone as people opt for varying sizes and manufactures for floor and wall. With large format and rectified tiles the grout lines are minimal so it really isn't a big issue. good pick Chippy. Looking at the offset between the first and last tile, i can see now that the tiles are a different size. Re: Bathroom Floor and Wall tiles alignment 10May 09, 2020 1:21 pm You can only match same size tiles to the mm in size. Other than that you go completely different. 1.5mm wall and 3mm floor is bs, you can do whatever you want anywhere. I think it look pretty neat, clearly different sizes as raised by chippy Registered Building - Always happy to help where I can and simply loves the game. DM me if you need help in VIC. Possibly both depending on the sizing. 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