Wow, what a day. We did a tile job with a new product that I will not name yet; we want to get it to work for us because it can be a time and labor savings for us. You hear about folks who have trouble on a job and install the entire job, but not me… We laid 60 feet and just had a bad feeling. We started looking into the reason and found that the floor prep was not holding like I wanted, so I sent Joey home at 5 p.m. and pulled the tile up, hand washed the thinset off and then removed the product that was my bed. I made a few calls only to find out the it looks like we mixed the mud too thick and that was the trouble. So cleaning all of the tile and the prep products got me done about 7:45 p.m.- what a pain-but the job and tile are saved because we stopped and did not go forward until we have the job under control. The homeowner is very happy to see us committed to the job. Our desire to make it right pleased them far more then I can express in words. She is happy to see the work being done right! When I taught at the NWFA schools we always said people never have time to do it right but always have time to do over. I'm just glad we found the trouble and did not install more just to say we got it done-and then blame who ever for a silly move on our part.
I am not sure why, but it seems like the new products just go south on me more than anyone else. But, that is okay, because we always call folks to get the best help and advice; it only makes us better at what we do and I learn so much from the tough jobs. We do our best to learn and grow from the good jobs as well as the tough ones.
