We bought white tiles for our bathroom a few weeks ago; we had a look at the boxes when thehy were delivered and they all appeared to be the ones we had ordered.
The tiler started work the other day; the first day he did one wall from two boxes; we came home from work and everything looked fine.
On the seond day we got a phone call from the tiler at about 5 o'clock to say that he had had problems with the tiles. He had done most of two walls, taking tiles from random boxes, and when he stepped back he said the walls looked like a chessboard. The tiles were from two different batches. One batch was the pure white we had ordered, but the other was a darker white which looked fine in the box but against the others was distinctly grey.
The tiler took down all the white tiles from the walls he had done and replaced them with grey ones, and continued with the job, finishing those two walls before ringing us.
When we got home, he told us that unless the tile shop could provide us with more of the grey tiles, the fourth wall would have to be done in the whiter ones. Also, he said that he didn't have enough of the greyer ones t finish the three walls he'd started in grey, so he needed one more box of grey to finish those.
We spoke to the tile shop and they said there was one box of grey tiles left, which they would swap for one of our remaining white boxes. The tiler went ahead and finished the grey walls with this box, then did the fourth wall with the whiter tiles.
All four walls are now done and if you don't look too closely you can't really tell that they're different, except that the grey tiles look absolutely awful against the white painted walls. Our real problem now, though, is that the tiler has announced that he miscounted the number of grey tiles he still needed; he had filled in some spots with timber because he needed to cut tiles for there and was leaving it till the end. When he had used the last grey tile he realised that he needs another 6 to fill in those parts. The shop don't have any of those left and can't get any more.
Is there anything we can do at this stage? I know that we shouldn't have gone ahead with the tiling when the tiles were wrong, but we didn't know till three walls were done! It wasn't at all obvious when they were in their boxes that they were different, and to be honest, we haven't bought many tiles before so didn't know that we should check batch numbers when they arrived - we just assumed that when they were all white, they'd be the same. Once we knew, we thought we could live with the three grey walls and one white one, because it actually just looks like it's a trick of the light in the room. Now that we're having to have isolated islands of white in the sea of manky grey tiles, it feels like the last straw, and we'd really prefer to get some sort of help from the tile shop with sorting the whole mess out.
Any thoughts?
The tiler started work the other day; the first day he did one wall from two boxes; we came home from work and everything looked fine.
On the seond day we got a phone call from the tiler at about 5 o'clock to say that he had had problems with the tiles. He had done most of two walls, taking tiles from random boxes, and when he stepped back he said the walls looked like a chessboard. The tiles were from two different batches. One batch was the pure white we had ordered, but the other was a darker white which looked fine in the box but against the others was distinctly grey.
The tiler took down all the white tiles from the walls he had done and replaced them with grey ones, and continued with the job, finishing those two walls before ringing us.
When we got home, he told us that unless the tile shop could provide us with more of the grey tiles, the fourth wall would have to be done in the whiter ones. Also, he said that he didn't have enough of the greyer ones t finish the three walls he'd started in grey, so he needed one more box of grey to finish those.
We spoke to the tile shop and they said there was one box of grey tiles left, which they would swap for one of our remaining white boxes. The tiler went ahead and finished the grey walls with this box, then did the fourth wall with the whiter tiles.
All four walls are now done and if you don't look too closely you can't really tell that they're different, except that the grey tiles look absolutely awful against the white painted walls. Our real problem now, though, is that the tiler has announced that he miscounted the number of grey tiles he still needed; he had filled in some spots with timber because he needed to cut tiles for there and was leaving it till the end. When he had used the last grey tile he realised that he needs another 6 to fill in those parts. The shop don't have any of those left and can't get any more.
Is there anything we can do at this stage? I know that we shouldn't have gone ahead with the tiling when the tiles were wrong, but we didn't know till three walls were done! It wasn't at all obvious when they were in their boxes that they were different, and to be honest, we haven't bought many tiles before so didn't know that we should check batch numbers when they arrived - we just assumed that when they were all white, they'd be the same. Once we knew, we thought we could live with the three grey walls and one white one, because it actually just looks like it's a trick of the light in the room. Now that we're having to have isolated islands of white in the sea of manky grey tiles, it feels like the last straw, and we'd really prefer to get some sort of help from the tile shop with sorting the whole mess out.
Any thoughts?