We had a tiler in on Wed to lay our hall floor. Concrete encaustic tiles, which are a specialist job. Agreed to £50 per sq foot as it’s a specialist job. Tiler asked us what colour grout; we said black. He said ok.
Turns out you can’t use coloured grout with these tiles. It stains them. It’s ruined the tiles, they’re covered in a black stain across all of them.
Spoke to the tiler on the Wed and he blamed us as we’d asked for black grout. My view is that I didn’t ask - he said what colour and I said black? If he’d said we couldn’t have coloured grout I wouldn’t have cared; he didn’t as despite claiming to be a specialist he’s nothing of the sort.
He then left the smeared tiles to do another job, promising to come back Fri to fix them. I queried it as I thought any stain gets worse the longer you leave it. He said it wouldn’t. I then did some research; it does.
He came back Friday lunchtime, still massively grumpy, and spent around an hour cleaning them. It didn’t work. He then left a chunk of tiles ungrouted, the rest of the floor a smeary mess, and submitted an invoice.
He’s since been sending me abusive messages saying I have to pay.
I spent 15 hours wet sanding the tiles by hand over the weekend. They’re a bit better but will always look a bit grimy. I also found 6 cracked tiles. I’ve contacted a repair company to see if they can help, but that will likely cost me hundreds. The tiles cost £1,000 (I know I know but I’d saved up and it’s a big hall).
Should I pay him? I’m about to get a torrent of abuse off him (I said I’d call him today). If he’d even tried to make it right then I’d feel differently; it’s the fact he half heartedly tried to clean them for an hour, tried to blame me and hasn’t even finished grouting...